


The Shard

by Certeis



Category: Original Work
Genre: BDSM, Centaurs, Cock & Ball Torture, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Face Slapping, Gen, Ice Play, Knifeplay, Knotting Dildos, M/M, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Null Bulge, Other, Pegging, Polyamory, Public Humiliation, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Rimming, Spit Kink, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Watersports, Wetting, its very gay, primal play, strapon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 50,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Certeis/pseuds/Certeis
Summary: Fleeing from the persecution of a new Human empire, one hundred and six magical beings create The Shard, an enclosed world outside of reality.  It stands for a hundred years before the pillar binding it together cracks.  As The Shard destabilizes, the blame falls squarely upon the weakest of the four families residing there...
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	1. Fanning the Flames

**Author's Note:**

> There's some NSFW art of Tieralle on my twitter, now :3  
> https://twitter.com/CerteisKitty/status/1284271580932005889

Without warning, light flooded out of the core of the massive obsidian pillar at the center of the Shard. The light grew incredibly bright, illuminating the entire Shard with radiance so intense that Qualo cried out in pain, shielding her eyes and turning her back. She heard several such other cries all across the square as people were struck by the blinding light. The whole thing only lasted several seconds before fading away, returning the Shard to its normal state of dim gloom, pierced only by the three miniature artificial suns that hovered right next to the pillar at various points.

Qualo took her time before she risked opening her eyes again. As she did, she still had spots all over her vision, and as she raised her hand in front of her face, she could barely make out the outline of it. Her vision started to clear up, but her head still ached and her eyes were watering. These flare ups were becoming more and more frequent, and of all the residents of the Shard, Qualo and her family were the most sensitive to the extreme light. Sympathy for that sensitivity was in short supply, though, as many of her fellow Aspects were intent on blaming her and her family for the damage to the pillar in the first place.

Qualo huddled in the upper branches of her tree for several minutes before she felt well enough to look around. The square’s activities were carrying on just as they had been before the flare up. People were just as intent on ignoring the problem as they were ignorant to Qualo’s presence. The people she was avoiding, five members of the Ta’vall family, were still there, sitting around a table playing tiles and laughing with each other as though nothing had happened. She grumbled, wondering if her friend Gevi would run out of bread and go home before the Ta’vall goons got bored. She could always just try and go to get some bread anyway, it was her right, she and her family needed to eat, and Gevi was allowed to distribute his family’s harvest as he saw fit. Those facts might not matter, though, bullies seeking to vent their petty frustration rarely cared about things like decorum and fairness.

Qualo looked around and spotted another place in a nearby tree that would maybe get her close enough to eavesdrop, and so she searched for a path through the shadows. The upper boughs of the trees were dark enough that she found one fairly easily, and shifted to the new position, sliding through the darkness and reappearing at the new location. The branch bent slightly under her weight as she appeared on top of it, but it held and didn’t creak or rustle loudly enough to alert the Ta’valls below her. In this new position she was able to catch most of what they were saying, but it was all utterly inane family gossip, commentary on the game they were playing, and some flirting. She hadn’t known what she expected, she dreaded that they’d be talking about her, but not even these five were petty enough to talk about her all the time.

From her perch, she watched Gevi at his little stall giving out bread to anybody who approached. That was typical in the Shard, food, shelter, and supplies were given out freely to any who asked, and it was only specialized items that were occasionally haggled over. Gevi and a few of his close brothers in the Tukkiqa family made the best bread, and so he received a steady stream of Aspects coming to pick up a loaf. He was only out here twice a week, and he often ran out after a few hours and went home. The last time Qualo had tried to get some food from him, she’d been chased off by several of the same bullies who were below her right now. She wasn’t eager to let it happen again, not only because it would mean she’d go back to her family without any food, but because she’d be teaching the Ta’valls that she had a pattern they could take advantage of. She may be hiding from these assholes, but she would not be their  _ prey. _   
  
Someone approached Gevi’s stall, and left holding a wrapped bundle under one arm. There was only one left, and she scowled as her hopes of playing it safe and hiding out until the bullies left evaporated. She decided to act, and started forming a plan. She wasn’t afraid of these fools, and she was close enough to use her Aspect against them. She reached down, feeling the darkness under the Ta’vall’s table. She coaxed it into doing her bidding, shaping the darkness into a physical form. Three shadowy tendrils coiled up around the edge of the table, and then, before the five Ta’vall bullies could react, lashed out, sending marble tiles scattering across the ground in every direction.

The Ta’valls cried out in anger and alarm, and rose to their feet, searching for her. One of them, a particularly petty and spiteful Aspect called Yukoi, summoned a wreath of flames around her as she did. The brightness stung Qualo’s eyes and burned away the shadowy libs reaching out from under the table. Once again, Qualo slipped through the darkness, this time appearing behind a tree near the edge of the square. She cried out in pain, reacting to Yukoi’s light in dramatic fashion, and then immediately stepped back through the shadows to where she’d been. The two quick jumps made her head spin, and she clung to the branch to keep herself from falling out of the tree and landing on the table right in front of her pursuers.

There was a slight hesitation among the group before they pursued the false lead Qualo had just thrown to them. They were undoubtedly suspicious of trickery, but Yukoi led the charge off into the tree line, and the others followed her burning silhouette. The rest of the Aspects in the square watched with a mixture of nervousness and disapproval. Qualo and her family weren’t popular, but many saw the feud between them and the Ta’valls as excessive and cruel. Not excessive and cruel enough to stand up for Qualo’s much smaller and weaker family, of course. Even if the Ta’valls didn’t outnumber her family by five to one, the bright flames their Aspect could conjure could easily dispel Qualo’s shadows.

She waited for the mild headache to clear up, and then shifted through the shadows to a better spot. She climbed down the tree without using her Aspect, landing softly on her feet next to Gevi. He looked over at her without even the slightest hint of surprise.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to provoke them like that?” he asked softly, glancing around the square to see if anybody had noticed her talking to him. Thus far, it didn’t seem like they had, and she subtly took a half step into a dark spot near Gevi’s stall.

“They were never going to leave,” Qualo replied with a huff. “Last time I came to see you, they chased me halfway across the Shard.” She gestured to the last loaf of bread, and Gevi started wrapping it up for her without complaining or arguing. He finished wrapping it up, and used his own Aspect to levitate it through the air in her direction. She snatched it out of the air and surreptitiously tucked it away. She did her best not to feel the subtle sting of Gevi using his Aspect, rather than just handing it to her. He didn’t want to be seen with her, he was afraid, or ashamed, maybe.

“...Thanks.” she said with a heavy sigh. This wasn’t Gevi’s fault, he probably just didn’t want trouble for himself or his brothers. She smiled at him, doing her best to scatter the poison of fear and resentment to the wind.

“Be safe, Qualo.” he gave her a small smile in return as he started to pack up his stall. “Those flare-ups are getting more and more frequent, we’re all afraid of what it means.”

“It means the Ta’valls will need to pin the blame on us more and more as the other Aspects get more worried,” Qualo replied bitterly, unwrapping a bit of the bread and tearing off a chunk for herself. Darkness, but it was good. She swore that Gevi and his brothers got better every year.

Gevi sighed as though he disagreed, but offered no rebuttal. There had been an ongoing commotion in the thicket around the square as the Ta’vall bullies crashed about looking for her, but the sound drew closer as they made their way back empty-handed. “You should probably go,” he said quietly.

Qualo edged away, but stopped short just before she made a break for it. “You know what we’re most worried about?” she asked.

“What?” he asked, even as Yukoi stormed back to the table and sat down, her flames still flickering and swirling around her.

“We’re not afraid of what the Ta’valls will do. We’re afraid the other two families won’t do anything to help us when they do it.” she said, and without pausing to hear Gevi’s response, slipped away with her prize before Yukoi and her gang spotted her. 

***

Qualo ducked through the treeline as quietly as she could manage, sticks and leaves softly crunching underfoot. The Shard was composed of a series of fifty two separate landmasses that floated around the obsidian pillar. The landmass that housed the market was small but densely covered in trees and brush, sitting far enough away from the central pillar that very little light from the three suns reached it. The inner landmasses were brighter, and mostly used to grow food, so places like the Tukkiqa family’s market square were further out.

After an hour of walking, she reached the clearing she was looking for, and looked up to see another landmass floating about a hundred and fifty meters above her head. A metal pole stuck out of the ground with perpendicular pegs at regular intervals for handholds. Bridges were more commonly used to connect the landmasses in the Shard, but there were several more vertical connectors such as this one that were less travelled and less well known, which made them useful to someone such as Qualo who was intent on keeping a low profile.

She climbed the makeshift ladder for about fifteen meters before gravity gradually lessened, and then dropped away entirely, and she started pulling herself along the ladder rather than climb it. She drifted through the darkness of the Shard towards the new landmass, a bundle of dark rock, sand, and scrub brush. Qualo’s hair was short on the sides and long on top, and as she approached the landmass, the long part, previously pulled down towards her neck by her acceleration, started to drift upwards towards the ground. As her hair stood straight ‘up,’ she stopped and twisted herself around so that her feet were pointed at the ground, and started going through a motion more akin to climbing again. Normal gravity slowly returned, and her feet crunched against the sand a short moment later. She did a single, quick hand motion to sweep her long bangs out of her face, and briefly glanced up at the landmass she’d come from to confirm that nobody had followed her.

She walked along the surface of this new landmass much more calmly and relaxed, feeling safe surrounded by the gloom and the darkness unchallenged by even a single candle. As far as any of the rest of the families knew, this landmass was uninhabited, and until recently, it had been. Qualo and her family had always had a fraught relationship with the other three families. They were also only four Aspects in number, compared to the others who numbered between twenty and fifty. So, even when they lived closer to the other families in the center of the shard, they’d never considered themselves to be safe. They’d secretly built and maintained two hidden dens on uninhabited landmasses tucked away in some well-hidden corners during their spare moments. When the obsidian pillar had cracked, they hadn’t waited around to see who or what would be blamed, a fear that had proven founded, as the Ta’vall family hadn’t even waited a full day before pointing the finger at them.

While their old home had been closer to people, food, and amenities, this hideout had its advantages. There was no light from the Ta’vall’s fake suns, nor the light of the real sun, back on the planet they’d left behind. The darkness was a comfort, for it was her family’s strength. Out here, the darkness was deep and nearly impenetrable, even Qualo’s superb night vision struggled to make out details sometimes, like the landmarks that should be….

She blinked in surprise as she realized that she actually couldn’t see anything at all, there should be rocks and outcroppings around here, outlines and shapes to guide her, but there was nothing. Had her vision been that damaged by the burst of light from the pillar? She stopped moving, suddenly frightened, and put her hand up in front of her face. Nothing. That was… suspicious. The darkness around her swirled, taking shape, and a tendril of the darkness reached out towards her, slowly at first, and then lunged, wrapping around the bundle of bread in the crook of her arm. The shadowy appendage took advantage of her surprise and yanked it free.

“Hey!” Qualo cried out in alarm as the manifestation of her family’s Aspect carried the bread away, skirting her prize into a wall of darkness that she just now realized wasn’t natural. A soft giggle echoed all around her, taunting her.

“Not funny, Caiz!” Qualo growled, using her own Aspect to assault the hallucination, breaking down segments of the dark mist surrounding her until she could see the familiar features of the land around her family’s home. The holes mended themselves quickly; Caiz was much better at manipulating this part of their shared Aspect than she was.

“No, no, no no… Taion’s sight engulfs you, Qualo…” The soft voice taunted her, the sounds swirling together, giving her no indication as to her brother’s location. She focused, punching small but specifically placed holes in the hallucination, the breaks lasting long enough to let her see what lay beyond it, even though Caiz mended them almost instantly. She punched another hole, and found him, perched on a nearby rock, unwrapping the bread with a devious grin on his face. The short boy was sitting cross-legged, a twisting, undulating darkness swirling just below the surface of his normally-pale skin, a quirk of how his Aspect manifested itself. The strange feature was only visible in the darkness and nobody quite understood why it was the way it was. He wasn’t even looking at her, and probably had no idea she’d spotted him. She punched the same hole again, and slid through the shadows, appearing right behind him. She grabbed her petulant brother, one hand around his torso and another on his forehead, and pulled him back into her.

Caiz squeaked in surprise, losing his balance and dropping the bread, but Qualo had him in her grasp, and she craned his head back so that he was looking up into her eyes. “Oh, hey Qualo,” he said cheerfully, the dark hallucination fading from the edges of her vision as he let it go.

Qualo didn’t say anything, she just leaned down and kissed him. Qualo dearly loved all of the members of her family, but if she was being honest, she enjoyed kissing Caiz the most. His lips were really soft, and he had a way of melting in her arms that she adored. He whined softly as she broke the kiss, and his eyelids fluttered open drunkenly.

“Hey Qualo,” he said again, his voice happy and reverant rather than mischievous.

“You little brat,” she laughed at him, and flicked his nose with her finger.

“Ow!” he whined, wriggling out of her arms and scooting off the rock.

“That bread’s for all of us. Where are Vindassa and Tieralle?” she asked, walking around the rock to scoop it up where Caiz had dropped it. With a scowl, she brushed some of the dirt off of it, deciding that this part would be Caiz’.

“Not sure where Vindassa is, I saw them heading towards the bridge earlier today. Tieralle’s inside,” he said, his hand covering his nose as though Qualo had scoured the cartilage clear from the bone rather than just flicked it. He was such a drama queen.

“I’ll set some aside for them when they get back, then.” Qualo said, heading for the outcropping that hid the entrance to their home. The hideout had no door, but rather, a long crack in a huge boulder that allowed one to peek through into the cave hidden within. Qualo moved around until she found the right path, and shifted through it, sliding through the shadows and appearing on the other side. It was a doorway that only she and her family could pass through, but it did pose some danger, a simple lantern placed on the other side of the rock would make it impossible for them to escape. Fortunately, they had an emergency exit, which  _ unfortunately _ required triggering a cave-in. Still, if the other Aspects found this place and locked the door on them, it wouldn’t be much use to them anymore, so it wouldn’t be much of a loss.

“Tieralle?” Qualo called out, heading into the main chamber of the cave. Tieralle was seated in her favorite chair with a tiny candle flickering next to her, staring at herself intently in the mirror. She had several small shadowy tendrils manipulating both a little razorblade and small sections of her long, dark hair. She was meticulously shearing tiny little bits of it off at a time so that it framed her face properly. Tieralle had begun doing this every few days now that they were in hiding, rather than once a week like she normally did. She sat there motionless and didn’t say a word, but Qualo was fairly certain she’d heard her. It looked like she was almost done, Qualo didn’t know much about how to cut hair, but she’d seen Tieralle do this thousands of times.

She moved into the room and set the bread down on one of their tables, hearing Caiz enter behind her as she did. It usually took him a while to get in and out, Caiz had always struggled with shadow sliding. Qualo retrieved a knife made out of obsidian and sliced the loaf of bread into four segments, sliding the part that had gotten dirty Caiz’ way as he approached. He pouted at her a little, but a stern look stymied any complaints. He snatched the bread off the table and took it to his formless, cotton-filled “chair” that resembled a big pillow more than it resembled an actual chair. He started directly tearing into it with his teeth like a little savage, completely ignoring Qualo’s silent look of disapproval.

“What have you brought us, Qua-la?” Tieralle’s voice had a smooth, silken flow to it that made everything she said sound like poetry. Qualo looked over at her and saw the room’s shadows form into a plethora of tendrils that slid into Tieralle’s hair, twisting and weaving it into one of her braids. Hair and darkness intertwined, forming an intricate pattern that looked to Qualo like a crown connecting into the braid’s long tail that hung down Tieralle’s back.

“A loaf of Gevi’s bread for my princess,” Qualo smiled at her as she approached. Tieralle took the compliment as genuine, which it was, and leaned in to kiss Qualo on the cheek. She sent one of her shadow tendrils into one of their cupboards, and it returned with a jar of jam.

“Did you have any problems with the Ta’valls?” she asked as her tendrils took the knife from Qualo’s hand and used it to slice her bread and then spread some jam onto it. One of Tieralle’s arms had been amputated at the elbow, and the other at the shoulder, so she used tendrils formed by her Aspect for most everything. It had happened back when Tieralle had been human, before she’d been blessed by Taion and made into an Aspect. She’d never expressed a desire to talk about it with Qualo or any of the rest of the family, and none of them asked.

“I’d say they had more of a problem with me.” Qualo smirked, but the snarky deflection didn’t alter the look of serious concern on Tieralle’s face one little bit.

“What did you do?” she asked solemnly.

“Look, Tieralle, it’s fine.” Qualo grumbled, breaking eye contact. “Yukoi and some of her siblings were hanging out in the market square and they weren’t leaving, so I just gave them something to chase while I went and talked to Gevi.”

“I do not want you starting—”   
  
“ _ We  _ didn’t start  _ any  _ of this!” Qualo snapped back angrily. “We came to the Shard in the first place beca—” Tieralle raised the remnant of her right arm a few degrees, and Qualo stopped. She glanced to the side and saw Caiz watching the two of them with a worried look on his face. She realized that she was trembling in anger, and that she’d started screaming. Tieralle’s tendrils wrapped around her back, gently pulling her towards the taller woman. With a sob, Qualo stepped forward, embracing Tieralle in a hug, burying her face in her cleavage.

“It’s alright, Qua-la” Tieralle murmured softly as Qualo sniffled. “We will outlast this, we always have.”

“Where’s Vindassa, anyway?” she asked.

“...They’ve gone off to inspect the pillar. They are becoming more and more convinced that the damage wasn’t natural.” Tieralle admitted after a brief silence.

“What?!” Qualo broke the hug to look Tieralle in the eyes. “Tell me you’re joking. The Ta’valls have the impact site locked down!”

“If anybody can sneak in quietly and undetected, it’s Vindassa. They aren’t a bear rampaging about in the underbrush, unlike another one of my family members.” Tieralle replied calmly, the snarky comment getting a giggle out of Caiz.

“I can’t believe the two of you are still keeping secrets from me,” Qualo huffed indignantly.

“Would you have trusted Vindassa to do what they felt was necessary?” Tieralle asked softly. The question was a knife slid gently into Qualo’s ribcage, and she winced at it. She’d known her family for one hundred and thirty years, and the scene played out in her head without much imagination on her part. Vindassa’s voice whispered in her mind that they were suspicious of the damage to the pillar, Qualo reacted by getting riled up and insisting that checking it out in person was ridiculous. She grumbled in defeat as she understood why Tieralle and Vindassa had kept her in the dark, and forgave them for it like she always did. She forgave the two of them, but she was definitely still going to yell at Vindassa later.

“I’m going to go make sure they’re alright,” she said grumpily, leaving her bread on the table and heading for the door.

“Good luck, Qua-la~” Tieralle called after her without even the barest attempt to stop her. Tieralle had this way of being on everybody’s side at the same time. It was frustrating at times, and one of the things she loved about her at others. Qualo shadow shifted through the door and left Caiz and Tieralle behind.

“Well, I’m gonna go for a walk, I guess,” Caiz said around a mouthful of bread, realizing what the implications of being alone with Tieralle were just now.

“Oh?” Tieralle asked. Tendrils of darkness materialized out of the shadows beneath Caiz’ chair. They wrapped themselves around his shoulders, yanking him roughly down into his oversized pillow with a yelp. Tieralle walked over to him, firmly planting her foot on his chest, and placing just enough weight onto him to ensure that she had his undivided attention.

“H-Hey, Tieralle, look, I know I…” Caiz laughed nervously, wriggling against the grasp of Tieralle’s Aspect, but not using his own to try and break free.

“You what? Ah, yes, you made me a promise, did you not?” she asked, leaning forward with a subtle smirk on her face. “And you weren’t skulking about just outside to avoid me, only to be lured inside only by the promise of food, were you?”

“No… Uhh… I…” Caiz stammered. That was exactly what had happened, of course. He swallowed nervously as Tieralle watched him intently, waiting patiently for an answer. “Look, Tieralle, Qualo told me how big it is, there’s  _ no way _ I can…”

“You said that you’d try, not that you’d succeed,” Tieralle replied smoothly, her smirk growing just a tiny bit. Seeing that talking his way out of it wasn’t going to work, Caiz tried to pout, adopting his best doe eyes, which only made Tieralle slowly shake her head at him.

“Ugh, fine…” Caiz gave his concession with an overly-dramatic pout, and the tendrils pinning him to the bed tightened instantly. Tieralle’s expert control over the manifested darkness immobilized him completely without actually digging painfully into a pressure point or choking the breath out of him. She removed her foot from his chest and strode into the family’s shared bedroom, which was less of a room and more of an alcove dug into the side of the cave with a flimsy dividing wall. She stood just inside the dividing wall, and Caiz heard one of her trunks opening, followed by the jingle of metal buckles. Caiz swallowed nervously as Tieralle looked over her shoulder and smiled at him.

“I’m going to have soooo much fun splitting you open with this one, little one~” the sadistic joy in her voice shone brightly as her Aspect’s limbs carried out a bundle of leather straps, followed by…   
  
“Taion’s breath, Tier—Gah!!” Tieralle’s head snapped towards him, and as soon as did, Caiz felt a sharp pinch on his ass. He tried to get away from the sharp pain, but struggling against Tieralle’s Aspect with just his body was pointless. He wasn’t even sure how she was doing it, pinching someone with their Aspect’s shadow limbs was like trying to pinch someone with a ball of cotton. 

“Does my dumb little cunt want to try that again?” Tieralle asked sweetly. He’d used the wrong name. Tieralle was in full dominatrix mode, not that she was ever in less than half dominatrix mode. She glanced back over at the strap-on harness and absolutely monstrously large dildo so that she could see where she was bringing them, and then with sex toy in front of her, started to walk very slowly and deliberately towards Caiz.

“Mommy, not even Qualo could take that cock, and… why is it shaped like that?” Caiz asked. Tieralle’s newest cock was probably almost a half meter long from tip to base with a tapered tip and shaft, and a  _ huge _ bulbous section near the base bigger than Caiz’ fist. If Caiz put both his fists together it’d probably be a better comparison. The cock was coloured a pinkish red, with a spider web of fake veins running through it. It looked like it was made out of silicone, the strange rubber-like material that Tieralle and several of her friends made collaboratively. Making it was a slow, tedious process, and Caiz guessed that Tieralle and her friends had probably spent over a year making enough for just this one cock. Tieralle typically only got a portion of what they made, too, so she must have been making this for years. No wonder she was so excited.

“I designed it the same way dog cocks are shaped. Don’t tell me we’ve been away from Terra so long that you’ve forgotten what dogs are?” Tieralle continued slowly walking towards Caiz, and her limbs disassembled and wrapped the straps of the harness around her hips with an incredible fluidity. Tieralle got the cock in place with a tad more difficulty, since it was actually so heavy that she was using three limbs to position it properly. She fastened the whole assembly in place, and the huge knotted cock flopped down, hanging between her knees.

“No, I remember what dogs are, I just never knew what their cocks were shaped like.” Caiz’s eyes flickered back and forth between the monster hanging between Tieralle’s legs and her face, some part of him hoping that she’d burst out laughing and profess that this was all a joke even as the vast majority of him knew it wasn’t. Stretching out his and Qualo’s holes was one of Tieralle’s favorite things in the world and after being in the same family for almost two hundred years she was starting to get very creative with how she went about it. 

“Well, my dumb little cockholster.” Tieralle lifted Caiz up and positioned him on his knees as effortlessly as if he had been a doll. “It’s shaped this way for a very good reason. You see, if I were to cum deep in that slutty little fuckhole of yours, that knot would swell up and trap all of my cum inside you until you’re nice and pregnant.”

“I’m pretty sure if you get that knot inside me I’ll never keep anything inside my ass ever again, even if it  _ could _ fill me with cum” Caiz rolled his eyes. He meant it as a joke, but even as he said it, he heard a sharp intake of breath from Tieralle.

“Oooh, my baby boy knows just what I want to hear.” Tieralle’s cock twitched as though it were alive, straightened up to point directly at Caiz’ face, and then, guided by Tieralle’s subtle use of shadowy limbs, swiftly delivered a wet cockslap to his face that would have knocked him over if he weren’t being held upright. He winced and groaned at the impact. He remembered the time eighty years ago he’d asked Tieralle to slap him with her cock. Back then, it had been hot, but now her cocks were so big, it was like being hit by a club. It was  _ still  _ hot, but ugh...

“Mm, just think about it. Your little ass permanently ruined and gaped open, never to properly close again. I could just shove whatever I want in there, whenever I want, without even preparing you, warning you, asking you…” Tieralle moved the tip of her cock to Caiz’ lips, and he opened up without objecting to Tieralle’s scenario. The tip of the cock was already slick with lube and it slid smoothly into his mouth for several centimeters before it abruptly stopped with Caiz’ jaw pried open as wide as his bone structure would allow.

“I’m sure Qualo would like that too. If she could just walk up behind you and shove her hand up your ass, I bet she’d do it every chance she got. Would my brainless fuck doll like that?” Tieralle humped Caiz’ face in several short thrusts, making his jaw ache. She pulled her cock out of his mouth, and right after posing the question to him, delivered another wet _SMACK_ ith the cudgel-like dog cock that made his head spin for a bit.

“Guhh…” Caiz moaned softly. Tieralle allowed Caiz a few moments to recover before her restricting shadows gave him a brief shake.

“Answer the question, cunt.” Tieralle demanded.

“N-No...” Caiz denied the question and the accusation. A long moment passed with the two of them looking at each other, Tieralle watching him intensely as she decided what to do. Caiz gently bit his tongue to steady his breathing and roughly squeezed his thighs together so that Tieralle couldn’t tell how wet he was. This was fucked up, how did she do this to him every time.

“Hm. Alright then.” Tieralle said, a genuine smile on her face that terrified Caiz more than a mocking giggle ever could. She lifted Caiz up and flipped him over so that he was hovering in the air, suspended face down with his ass at the perfect height to be plowed by Tieralle’s huge knotted cock. “If you don’t want that, then I can just fuck your cunt with the first few inches of my new toy.”

Tieralle’s cock teased the lips of Caiz’ cunt. The tapered tip teased his front hole, promising penetration without actually giving it to him. “Unless you just don’t want to admit it, hmm? Tell you what, fuckpuppet. All you have to do is tell your Mommy which of your holes you want her to stick this big fat dong into. I can either fuck your cunt nice and steady, or we play a game of ‘bury the knot’ in your slutty asshole so we can find out whether or not it’ll close afterwards.” The wickedness and glee in Tieralle’s voice grew with every word until it was downright maniacal.

“We can… uhh…” Caiz stammered. Two competing trains of thought ran through his head and he found words dying on his tongue. One train made sense, he and Tieralle could just have sex the way they often did. He liked having sex with Tieralle, after all. The  _ other _ train was letting itself get carried along with Tieralle’s fantasy about whether or not he’d ever have control over his asshole again. Every idea or fantasy sounded good to him when Tieralle proposed it, even the really really bad ones. This one time she’d somehow convinced him to—

“Come on. All I need is one word. Ass, or Cunt.” Tieralle cooed. She put on an act of motherly patience, but Caiz knew better. He cleared his throat, took a few deep breaths, and opened his mouth to say cunt. It would be a ridiculous struggle to even get the shaft of Tieralle’s huge canine cock into his ass, let alone getting the knot in there. There was no point in pushing his body so hard when it wasn’t going to happen, it would be painful and awful and he’d regret it for days.

“...Ass.”

“What a good boy I have,” Tieralle giggled. The tapered tip of Tieralle’s cock wedged into Caiz’ asscheeks, finding his hole as though drawn by magnetism. There was almost no pause before Tieralle  _ pushed  _ and the head of her cock popped inside with an intense stretching sensation.

“A-Ah! Fuck, Mommy—!” Caiz whined as the dog cock started to slide inside his tight asshole. He was about to complain about how Tieralle had just lied to him, but even as he opened his mouth, he realized.  _ ‘I said ass. I told her to fuck me in the ass? But I… Oh dammit.’ _

“Woow, look at that hungry little fuckhole go!” Tieralle cackled, and exhaled a shuddering breath that sounded like she was well on her way to an orgasm already. Caiz felt the sticky moisture between his thighs spread, but the feeling of so much cock splitting his ass open was so intense that even if he was cumming his brains out he wasn’t sure that he’d notice.

“Mommy, it’s sooo big. Slow down, please? It… owwww…” Tieralle kept pushing, slowly sinking more of her cock inside. The strength of Tieralle’s Aspect had a dark, supernatural precision and power to it, and it was pulling his ass inexorably towards her hips She was a force of nature, unyielding, unrelenting, and she had made it quite clear what she wanted to use her wicked strength to do to his asshole.

“No, no, no… I can’t slow down, you’re not broken yet.” Tieralle pulled away, the tapered cock sliding almost all the way out, but before Caiz could sigh in relief, she rammed it right back in, the shaft only halfway inside him but already battering at the limits of his rectum. She repeated the process, roughly fucking him with the tip of her cock. Caiz moaned loudly as she fucked him, the huge shaft stretching him, filling his ass up. The pain and exertion didn’t last long, his ass was used to this, and soon it was nothing but deliriously perfect friction inside his body. Tieralle thrust her cock in one final time, and she twisted her hips, her cock wriggling about with expert practice. It found the path deeper into his guts easily, and she continued pushing, feeding more and more of her cock inside.

“C-Cmon… so soon?” Caiz whined as Tieralle started to straighten out his intestines with the gigantic fuckpole. The shaft got thicker as it went, too, so it was also stretching his hole as it packed his insides full of dick.

“We have soooo much more to go, no time for a pump and dump, much as I know you’d like that. I see you letting Vindassa and Qualo empty their balls in you ass like that all the time, you little whore,” Tieralle used his tendrils to adjust the angle of Caiz’ legs and lifted one one knee, roughly grinding it into his cunt. Caiz cried out in pain as Tieralle’s knee painfully dug into his sensitive sex. Tieralle laughed, and gave him three quick strikes with her knee, pain and masochistic pleasure blooming more intensely out of each successive one. The third one definitely made him cum, but he clenched his teeth to keep it to himself. He wasn’t about to give Tieralle the satisfaction.

“Q-Qualo’s cock is too small to even f-fuck...” Caiz tried to object to Tieralle’s story but his ability to form coherent arguments or comebacks was fading fast. He realized that Tieralle would probably be able to tell that he’d just come from the tremor in his voice, and cursed himself. She knew him too well.

“I know it is! This slutty asspussy is so cavernous that you probably don’t even feel her cock when she sticks it inside you, huh? But you still let her do it just because you’re  _ such  _ a depraved, wanton boy whore, aren’t you?” Tieralle cackled at him, and for good measure, delivered one final knee to his cunt which drove the breath out of his lungs. He tried to scream, but all that came out of him was a strangled croaking noise. When he didn’t have a comeback, Tieralle just chuckled happily, and continued pulling him backwards and cramming him full of more dog cock.

With a final, steady push, Tieralle took a step towards Caiz, and he felt the knot pressing into his cheeks, getting very close to his hole. “Vin tells me not to break my toys, but how can I not, when—A-Aah!”

Tieralle humped her cock into Caiz’ ass and she shuddered and groaned even as Caiz wailed and cried. The knot thoroughly wedged itself into Caiz’ ass cheeks, poised to begin the momentous task of ruining Caiz’ little asshole forever. She waited there, not pushing it deeper, and just and humped into his ass, grinding the canine knot against his cheeks and twisting the shaft deep inside him.

“Y-You got it…” Caiz whined, feeling the rubbery material so deep in his body that he could swear it was up to his belly button. “G-Gimmie a break to… Mommy? No, you can’t be…” Caiz felt a cold gel-like liquid being worked into his already hugely dilated ring as Tieralle liberally applied a second coating of lube. Caiz didn’t believe it, even with his intestines impaled so deeply by Tieralle, he thought burying the knot was a joke, it was just dirty talk, she couldn’t  _ actually  _ be…   
  
One of Tieralle’s shadow tendrils pressed something cylindrical, soft, but firm into his mouth. Caiz felt the strange object with his tongue, and almost spit it out, but one of Tieralle’s limbs wrapped itself around his face, sealing it inside with the two ends sticking out the sides of his mouth.

“That’s for you to bite down on, instead of your tongue.” Tieralle whispered into his ear, her relatively light upper body pressing down onto his back. Caiz was confused for a second, and then realized that Tieralle had forced a bit into his mouth.

Tieralle straightened back up, and the shadowy amalgamation  _ pulled _ his body towards her. Caiz and Tieralle had been having sex a long time, and he was very used to the feeling of her stretching his asshole wider. He often thought he was used to it, that this time, she’d found the physical limits of his body, only to have such thoughts obliterated when she did something like this. Caiz screamed into the gag, thrashing in the shadowy bondage as he was slowly pulled backwards. Every single millimeter he was pulled backwards was agony, the bulbous knot making his entire body shudder with exertion and pain and horrible agonizing pleasure. He tried to pull himself even the tiniest bit away from his tormentor, just a tiny bit to ease the intense pressure, but Tieralle’s Aspect held him completely still as it forced his fuckhole wider, and wider, and wider…

His screams and struggles grew louder and louder and all they accomplished was to make Tieralle’s giggles and moans more joyous and more hungry. The pain spiked for an instant, and Caiz was afraid he’d pass out, but then it abated and he felt himself slide forward several blissful centimeters.

“We’re getting pretty close here, baby~” Tieralle cooed. “I think one more good push will do it, but we’re going to take a break first. I figure about… five seconds should be enough, don’t you?”

Caiz blinked, his brain barely making any sense of the words. He realized, as Tieralle finished speaking, that his thighs were drenched. He’d probably cum several times, and he was exhausted. He felt several sets of muscles and parts of his body contracting and twitching around the fuckpole impaling him. Every tiny twitch of his body jostled the cock, and disturbing it even slightly put so much pressure on his body, he was afraid to move during the five minute break.

It took all five seconds of the break for Caiz to realize that she actually  _ had  _ said seconds and not minutes. He could barely believe it when she started pulling him backwards, wiggling her hips and twisting that knot back into his hole. Caiz shuddered in discomfort and exertion again, crying and shaking his head and trying to beg for mercy through the bit gag. When those efforts all yielded not even the tiniest bit of mercy, he screeched into the gag, trying to use his Aspect to slip through the shadows, to conjure shadow tendrils to pry himself free, to assault Tieralle’s mind with visions of all her worst fears and most terrifying nightmares. None of it did anything.

Tieralle laughed at his pathetic, frenzied struggling, and pushed harder. With a smooth motion, the knot leapt forward just a little, and an elated “Yesssss!” came out of Tieralle’s mouth, followed by a moan and the very familiar sounds of her orgasm Caiz almost passed out from the pain and the incredible exertion, all the strength bled out of his limbs, and he came too. The orgasm hurt more than the gigantic bone being buried in his ass. The involuntary contractions of his ass and cunt just served to jostle the cock around. His nerves and body were on fire, his muscles ached, his internal organs felt like they’d been forced up into his chest. 

Caiz drifted back up to reality, the pain in his ass having faded to a dull throb, but the extreme discomfort persisted. He moved a tiny bit, and was immediately assaulted with the pleasure and discomfort of his rearranged internal organs pressing against Tieralle’s massive dong. On top of that, he felt Tieralle, and gravity. He was sitting in her lap, sitting on her stupid gigantic dog cock.

“Is it… all the way in?” he asked groggily.

“Mmm, almost.” she replied, her voice awash with joy and afterglow.

“S-Seri—Ah!!” Tieralle moved ever so slightly, the tiny motion sending shockwaves of sensation all the way through Caiz.

“Seriously.” Tieralle answered with a giggle. “You ready to get it out?”

“Yessssss! I can’t believe you actually put that stupid thing inside me!” Caiz whined.

“Well, how else was I supposed to know for sure that I got my bitch pregnant?” Tieralle whispered in his ear, her teeth nipping him gently. Her hand gently rubbed Caiz’ stomach, and he winced as he felt her fingers trace the outline of the bone she’d buried in him.

“G-Get it… owwww…. Out…” Caiz whined. Tieralle murmured her assent, and Caiz felt her limbs reform and encircle his chest, pulling him upwards. Caiz let out an enormous sigh of relief as the knot slid free. Tieralle continued pulling him off of her like she was removing a fleshlight, and when the shaft was half-free, his stomach gurgled and a deluge of lube poured out of him, running down his thighs in rivulets. The cock came free with a pop. It fell and slapped Tieralle’s thigh with a sound that could have come from someone being struck in the head with a club. Tieralle rotated his limp, numb, utterly destroyed body around so that he was facing her.

She leaned in and kissed him gently. “I’m so lucky that my toys don’t break easily, aren’t I?” she whispered devilishly into Caiz’ ear after the kiss.

“Love you too,” Caiz replied, trying to be sarcastic, but he was too tired, and he meant it too much.   
  
“Oh, and by the way, Qualo already  _ did  _ take this cock…” Tieralle giggled in his ear.

***

_ “You know what information I need.”  _ Vindassa created a voice in Laioq’s mind. The ghostly hallucination didn’t stress Laioq out, of course. She’d been an acquaintance of Vindassa’s for two centuries, she was plenty used to their method of speaking at this point. Even outside of Vindassa’s immediate acquaintances, the Shard was nowhere near as large as the planet they’d all left behind - Terra. With only one hundred and six Aspects living here, everybody had heard about the mute member of the Taion family who whispered into your mind at least once.

“I know, Vin, but I’m telling you, the Ta’valls have really closed ranks since the pillar was damaged, they barely talk to me anymore.” Laioq snuck a worried glance out of the window as though someone else might slip into her house through it. It wasn’t likely, not even the rest of Vindassa’s family were skilled enough at shadow sliding to slip through a closed window, and none of the other families’ Aspects even worked that way.

_ “You know more than you realize. Korbrass will be rotating three teams of three people, it’s how they operate. Who is missing, and when. I need to know the composition of their teams.”  _ Vindassa pressed Laioq, giving her a little push by altering their appearance in her mind to something more… her type.

Laioq’s eyes went wide as she took in the sight of Vindassa as a hulking, half-bestial humanoid covered in black fur. “F-Fuck, Vin…!” Laioq exhaled sharply and shook her head, blushing brightly and squirming, her thighs clenched tight. “Don’t do that!”

_ “Of course. Never again. Just help me out, Laioq. Unless you trust that Korbrass has everyone’s best interest in mind.”  _ Vindassa teased her as she blushed. Laioq had drunkenly confessed to Vindassa one night that she thought werewolves were sexy and they’d never let her forget it.

“Of course I don’t. Ugh, fine…” Laioq stared off into the distance for a moment, drumming her fingers on the table. Her nails grew and shortened as she drummed, creating a series of evolving melodies. Vindassa was quite sure she used her Aspect for the tiny act of shapeshifting without even thinking at this point.   
  
“Yukoi is their best fighter, and she and Toz are inseparable. They threw a fit last time Korbrass tried to give them separate work shifts, Toz complained to me about it for hours. I also never see them around in the evenings anymore, but it could be just—”   
  
_ “It’s a start,”  _ Vindassa drew a sheet of paper out of their satchel and started taking notes. The Ta’vall’s Aspect allowed them to control fire, water, and lightning, so Vindassa underlined the names of the Ta’valls that were known for being particularly skilled at creating and manipulating fire. They would be Vindassa’s biggest problem, the bright light of Ta’vall flame would make shadow sliding difficult.

After an hour of listening to Laioq’s anecdotes, Vindassa had a list of nine names that they were quite sure represented the people Korbrass had put on guard duty. Unbeknownst to everybody in the Shard, even to Korbrass, they and Vindassa had known one another back when they’d been human, they knew Korbrass’ military training, and two centuries of living here with them in the Shard had only made Korbrass more predictable to them.

_ “One last thing…”  _ Vindassa said as they folded up the sheet of parchment and tucked it away into a pocket.  _ “Your family. What are they saying about me and mine?” _

Laioq’s fidgeting intensified for a moment, the gesture communicating more to Vindassa than what they expected her words to. “I’ve always fought for your family, Vin,” she said quietly.

_ “I know you have. That is not what I asked.”  _ Vindassa replied.

There was a long, slow exhalation as Laioq turned to meet Vindassa’s eyes. “We’re not talking about hunting you down, if that’s what you’re worried about. You know us, the Toira family doesn’t like the infighting and the gossiping, but loyalty towards the Ta’valls runs deep, too; we can’t grow food without light from the Ta’valls’ suns. I think most of us just want to ignore the problem until it goes away.”

_ “The problem ‘going away’ may not take the form that they imagine it will,”  _ Vindassa said grimly.

“Yeah, I know that. I love my family, Vin, but they’re as stubborn as your sister, sometimes. You know, I heard an hour ago that she attacked Yukoi and her friends in the market.” Laioq blatantly changed the subject to avoid talking about this, and Vindassa allowed her to.

_ “A story equal parts truth, melodrama, and lies, I’m sure. Qualo is impulsive but she’s not seeking to fan the flames. The light hurts our eyes, after all.”  _ In spite of their words in Qualo’s defense, the story worried Vindassa. Qualo had promised them that she’d lay low for a few weeks, and they’d expected her word to be worth something. Qualo’s temper frequently got the better of her, but she usually put forward  _ some  _ effort to do what she promised.

“Yeah, well, whatever you’re planning won’t be much better I’m sure. Do me a favor and keep my name out of it, alright?” Laioq leaned back in her chair petulantly.

_ “No. What I’m doing is for the sake of every Aspect in the Shard. Your name counts amongst them, does it not?”  _ Vindassa gave her a serious look that drained the petty resentment out of her expression. She stopped leaning on her chair and straightened her posture.

“Yeah, yeah it does, Vin. Just remember—” The sound of yelling and the crashing of ceramic from downstairs cut Laioq off. She bolted to her feet, listening intently. “That wasn’t you, right?” she asked nervously.

_ “It was not,”  _ Vindassa assured her, they’d created no such sounds in Laioq’s mind, and in fact they’d heard it too. Laioq went to the door of her room and opened it, revealing a flash of light illuminating the wall, followed by more shouts. Laioq cursed, and ran down the stairs, leaving Vindassa alone.

Vindassa rose to their feet, approaching the top of the stairs slowly right up until they heard a familiar voice through the commotion.

_ Qualo. _

***

Laioq’s bar wasn’t the only source of alcohol or other intoxicants in the Shard, but it was the only establishment dedicated to it. Laioq and a few of her siblings in the Toira family operated it, but it was well-frequented by the Ta’vall and Tukkiqa families too. Until recently, the Taion family had been common sights here too with the exception of Tieralle, who didn’t drink and couldn’t stand being around more than a few people at a time. 

There were no doors to the building, only an expansive entryway, and Qualo strode in like she belonged here - she  _ did  _ belong here, after all. She saw members of all three families sitting in the large main room, eating, drinking, and playing games. She even saw a few Tukkiqa Aspects at what looked like a book club. She didn’t take full stock of the patrons present, but at a glance, she didn’t spot any particularly antagonistic Ta’valls, and so she approached the bar.

“Uhh… Hey Qualo.” One of Laioq’s brothers, Jai’ir was tending the bar, leaning against the wall with a book in his hand.

“Hey Jai’ir. Is Laioq here?” she asked calmly.

Jai’ir looked at Qualo like she was a venomous snake for one moment, and then looked to her right. “Hey, not in here, please?” he asked. Qualo looked in the direction of who Jai’ir was addressing, and cursed, backing away.

“Hello, Ms.Taion, I believe you and I need to have a chat.” Orobin Ta’vall was a solidly built man with a calm countenance and eyes that betrayed nothing. He was also one of his family’s soldiers and Qualo wasn’t sure how she hadn’t spotted him immediately.

“I’ve nothing to say to you, I’m here to find my brother, I haven’t seen him all day.” Qualo felt around her with her Aspect for a pathway that she could shadow slide through, but the bar wasn’t quite dark enough and there weren’t many good options. Instead, she took a half step towards a table whose occupants were subtly trying to be somewhere else without being blatant enough to just get up and leave.

“This is serious, Ms. Taion, you assaulted one of my family members earlier today.” Qualo wasn’t sure if the lie that slithered out of Orobin’s mouth was deliberate, or if Yukoi actually had her family convinced that Qualo had attacked her instead of ruining a board game.

“I wasn’t aware that ceramic  _ Gao’a _ tiles actually had family status. I’ll happily apologize to them, but Yukoi can eat my ass.” Qualo smiled sweetly at him. She wasn’t entirely sure that Yukoi and her siblings had been playing  _ Gao’a _ , there were several games people played that involved tiles, but it seemed like a good guess.

“If you insist…” Orobin extended his arm and activated his Aspect, creating a ball of flame hovering just inches above his upturned palm. Radiant light filled the bar, sending the shadows scattering to the far corners and stripping Qualo of her Aspect’s powers in an instant. The flame formed and his concentration no longer necessary, he looked up at Qualo just in time to get hit square in the face with an empty bottle. There was an echoing _thunk_ as the thick glass hit him and bounced off at an odd angle. The flame vanished as he stumbled backwards, collapsing onto another patron’s table, sending plates, cutlery, and half-eaten food flying. While the rest of Qualo’s family were all especially skilled at different parts of their Aspect, Qualo wasn’t exceptional at any of them. What she _was_ really good at was throwing things.

“I said not in—”   
  
“Toira’s fangs, what’s going on down here?” Laioq appeared at the top of the stairs. She moved down them like an encroaching storm, steady but with an aura of dread. Out of the corner of her eyes, Qualo spotted two Ta’valls that had risen to their feet. The Ta’valls shared a look with one another before they silently walked over to Orobin, clearly intent on checking on him rather than escalating the conflict.

“I’m just politely refusing Orobin’s invitation. I think he’s had too much to drink.” Qualo took one step towards Laioq, and then stopped as she felt the shadows twist around her. An instant later, Vindassa appeared behind her, their arm went around her shoulder, and then the two of them slipped through the shadows, Vindassa pulling Qualo with them. The two of them jumped like this twice more, appearing in a small copse of trees near the outskirts of the Toira community.

Vindassa didn’t remove their arms, they leaned in and kissed Qualo, their hand cradling her head, fingernails gently scratching her scalp and playing with her hair. They broke the kiss and smiled at her. “ _ Hello, love~ _ ” their voice crept into Qualo’s mind and for one moment Qualo saw a version of herself that was absolute perfection; the way that Vindassa saw her.

Qualo scowled, and raised a finger at them. “Oh no you don’t. I’m mad at you,” she huffed. It was difficult to be angry at Vindassa when they turned on the sly charm, but she had  _ lots  _ of practice.

“ _ Well, I tried. _ ” Vindassa’s voice had a sort of fuzziness to it as they focused more upon scanning their surroundings to make sure nobody had followed or spotted them. Qualo very much doubted that anybody could have pursued them, to the occupants of Laioq’s bar, it probably looked like Qualo had been swallowed by darkness and vanished without a trace. Qualo would be the only one there who could tell exactly what Vindassa had done, and what their limitations were. A clever hunter would know that Vindassa could only carry her about forty meters at most. Even now, Qualo could see the tension and stress in Vindassa’s stance, the strain of sliding through the shadows four times with a passenger had pushed her sibling to their limit.

“I can’t believe you and Tieralle. I’m not a helpless little girl anymore, Vin. How old were you when I received the Taion Aspect?” Vindassa looked at her as though the question were serious, and then realized that it was a trap that Qualo wouldn’t let them not answer.

“ _ I was seventy four. I’d had my Aspect for forty years _ ” Their voice was a whisper, Qualo barely even realized that the thought in her mind wasn’t a memory of hers.

“Yeah, and I was twenty, that’s why I was okay with the selfless old mentor routine of yours. That was over one. hundred. years. ago, Vin. I’m tired of everything being so hard with you. I don’t even remember how long it took before you’d have sex with me. You say that you don’t want me to think of myself as a third wheel in this family, Vin, but what the fuck am I supposed to think when you do this to me?” As Qualo’s flaring emotions transformed the scolding into a full-on rant, Vindassa alternated between wincing, and looking around to see if anybody had heard the little spikes in volume.

_ “...I hear you, Qualo.”  _ Vindassa replied after a long pause. They sounded remorseful, but Vindassa could make themselves sound however they wanted. 

“Show me, don’t tell me,” Qualo said with a scowl. “What’s the plan for dealing with these Ta’vall cunts?”

_ “Let’s head home first. I’m going to check out the damage to the pillar tomorrow. I was going to go in the morning, but now I’d rather go in the afternoon. That’s when Orobin’s team will be on guard duty, and now I suspect he might have a concussion.”  _ Vindassa put their hand on her shoulder and smiled.

“He  _ definitely _ has a concussion. Did you see that throw? It was beautiful.” Qualo grinned, remembering the stunned, glassy look on Orobin’s face right before he fell over. When Vindassa shook their head, she punched them in the arm and laughed as the two of them left the settlement behind.


	2. The Harpoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw: ballbusting, CBT.

Vindassa grabbed Qualo and pulled her with them through the cracked boulder that was the door to their home. They didn’t have to pull her with them, but they always did. Vindassa was able to slide through the shadows as easily as Qualo could walk or run, and they were particularly good at pulling other people with them. Unlike Vindassa, Qualo hadn’t spent very much of the last century practicing with her Aspect, and the current crisis was making her regret it. 

Their family’s hideout was almost exactly the way she’d left it three hours ago except now it was accompanied by the faint hiss of their kettle and the subtle smell of wood smoke. Caiz was naked and sprawled out face-down on the giant pillow he loved so much. Even with his face buried in the pillow, Qualo could hear him groaning softly.

“Tieralle, what did you do to Caiz?” Qualo asked, moving into the living area.

“Nothing I wouldn’t do again, darling, he’s just putting on a show for you two.” she called out from the kitchen. Qualo looked at Caiz to see what he had to say, but her brother didn’t move even a single centimeter. He lay there doing his best impression of a corpse, which might have been convincing if she couldn’t see him breathing. Vindassa walked up and knelt next to him, poking their brother in the ass like they couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.

“It isssss!” Caiz whined, replying to some question that Vindassa had projected into his mind. “Tieralle is the  _ worst _ .”

Tieralle emerged from the kitchen with shadowy tendrils carrying four cups of gently steaming tea. Two floated over and set their cups next to Caiz and Vindassa, while the other pressed a cup into Qualo’s. Tieralle stood in front of her, inspecting her with pursed lips. “Your hair, Qualo,” she said after a brief pause. The words were both statement and condemnation.

“Is it that time already?” she asked, running her hand through her long bangs. She heard a soft jingling from Vindassa and Caiz, and when she glanced over at the two of them, she saw Vindassa freeing their cock from their pants.

“What? No! Don’t you dare!” Caiz snapped, his head whipping around to glare angrily at Vindassa. Qualo watched as Vindassa’s silent reply made Caiz’ eyes go wide, and he bit his lip nervously. “N-No… I’m not… C’mon, Vin, don’t…”

“It  _ is _ that time. Come, have a seat, finish your tea, and I’ll get my tools.” Tieralle fussed over her a little bit, her shadow limbs grabbing and fiddling with her hair. Qualo took the opportunity to dart forward and land a surprise kiss on Tieralle’s lips. Tieralle smirked at her, but quickly shooed her away so that she could go into the bedroom to grab her tools.

“Yes! Yes it does! You’re both the worst!” Caiz howled, and Qualo looked over to see that Vindassa had Caiz by the hips and was fucking him roughly, clearly intent on using her brother like a cum dump. Caiz had specifically requested that any time Qualo and Vindassa wanted to cum in his ass, that they just do it without asking him. Caiz had been the one to lay down the rules, but Caiz was an expert at finding things to superficially complain about.

“You know you could just say your safe word, right Caiz?” Qualo snickered at him as she pulled one of their stools away from the dinner table and sat down on it.

“Yes I know! Thank you, Qualo! Taion’s breath, you’re  _ all _ the worst!” Caiz tried to throw her a dirty look but Vindassa put their hand on the back of his head and forced his face down into the pillow to muffle the outbursts.

_ “That’s a bit better, don’t you agree?”  _ Vindassa’s voice laughed in Qualo’s mind, and she snorted at the two of them before sipping at her tea. It wasn’t the tea she liked, which meant that they must be out; Tieralle knew what tea she liked. She sighed as she realized that she was probably going to have to dodge even more Ta’vall harassment if she wanted to get another brick of the tea she liked. She used to grow it herself on a windowsill, but, well...

“My my, what a tantrum. Perhaps taking your time will teach him a lesson?” Tieralle walked past Caiz and Vindassa’s vigorously fucking silhouette with several sharp implements hovering around her face. She laughed and shook her head at whatever Vindassa’s response was, and stood in front of Qualo, who quickly chugged her tea down.

“So I see you found Vindassa easily enough. Were they in the first place you checked?” she said as her tendrils started selecting and shearing off bits of Qualo’s hair using the tiny razorblade.

“Yeah, and the  _ two of us _ are going to investigate the pillar tomorrow, isn’t that right?” Qualo answered loudly. Vindassa didn’t respond, even if they hadn’t been balls-deep in her brother, they could only talk to one person at a time, and forming specific hallucinatory voices in others’ minds was much more difficult than just speaking - for those who  _ could  _ speak, that is.

“Mmhmm,” Tieralle dismissed Qualo’s comment, moving quickly. She was much faster at cutting Qualo’s hair than she was at cutting her own. Qualo was convinced that it was only partly because Tieralle could better see what she was doing, and partly because she didn’t try as hard to make Qualo’s hair perfect. She was fine with that, she’d never really notice either way.

She heard Vindassa’s breathing shift, and an odd-sounding groan came out of them. A moment later, she heard them slap Caiz’ ass and then they started re-buckling their pants.

“...Thank you Daddy!” Caiz replied loudly and suddenly with all the saccharine sarcasm he could muster - which was a lot.

Their fun with Caiz finished, Vindassa opened up one of the storage trunks in a part of the living area that had a low ceiling, and returned with a rolled up sheet of parchment. They paused awkwardly for a moment, the silence in the room permeated by one of Caiz’ muffled whines, and then went over to Tieralle’s dresser.

“Yes, just be careful with it, dear,” Tieralle replied to them. With permission received, Vindassa started noisily dragging the tall wooden dresser into the middle of the room, in front of where Qualo was getting her haircut.

Qualo raised an eyebrow at whatever it was that Vindassa was doing, but didn’t move lest she incur Tieralle’s wrath. It became obvious when Vindassa unrolled their parchment and pinned it up against the back of Tieralle’s dresser, showing that it was a detailed map of the entire Shard. Vindassa got out several other bits of paper and started scribbling little things on them and sticking them to the map. Tieralle got close to finishing Qualo’s hair as Vindassa continued to work silently on, and even Caiz dragged his giant pillow closer so he could see what was happening.

_ “Alright, do you want to repeat for the others?”  _ Vindassa asked, and Qualo agreed. Tieralle finished cutting Qualo’s hair and let her go so that she could put her tools away. With Tieralle’s approval, Vindassa tapped a section of the map.  _ “The main crack in the pillar is here. From what we can tell, something struck it, the damage all spreads outwards from this point.”  _ Vindassa explained the situation in very basic terms, and Qualo repeated everything they were saying out loud for Tieralle and Caiz’ benefit.

“Have you found any confirmation of that? I kinda think the Ta’valls just picked a spot to set up their camp and called it the impact site. It’s easier for them to point the finger at us if they fabricate a crime scene.” Qualo asked, dusting some of the hair off her shoulders.

_ “No, I’m quite certain the impact site is real,”  _ Qualo rolled her eyes as she was forced to repeat a statement shutting down her own suspicions, but didn’t argue the point. She still thought it was suspicious that the ‘impact site’ was right outside the landmass that the Ta’valls had built their family home upon. It was very convenient that they had built a bridge connecting the landmass to the pillar itself so that they could inspect the damage, and that the bridge was right next to the seat of the Ta’vall’s power.

_ “We won’t be able to get in across the bridge without being seen. I was going to go to this landmass - here.”  _ Vindassa pointed to one of the landmasses near the center of the Shard, one that was used mostly for growing rice. That particular landmass had a huge rocky protrusion on one end about two hundred and fifty meters long, something that was part shelf and part mountain.

The Shard’s gravity was very strange. All of the landmasses that composed it had been ripped from Terra, and in places, gravity worked the same as if the land were still a part of the planet. In other places, it pulled objects to the underside, at odd angles, or faded away entirely, leaving objects, or people, to float weightlessly.

“I mean, that’s close to the impact site, but how are we going to get there? Jump?” Qualo asked.

_ “Yes. The cliff, here.”  _ Vindassa tapped the part of the map showing the shelf of rock protruding out from the side of the landmass, and as they did it a loud  _ thunk _ sounded from the dresser. They all paused for a moment, and Tieralle let out a low hum.

“Darling.” Tieralle’s voice was laced with threat. Vindassa’s eyes went wide, and they looked over at her. “It had better not be.” she replied.

Qualo looked down under the dresser, and saw a familiar leather bundle lying there on the floor. “Oh! That’s where I hid those!” she laughed and got down on her knees to scoop it up. She unbuckled the clasp on the leather pouch and pulled out one of the three steel throwing knives contained within. The knives were custom-made, and getting a good blade made out of steel was extremely hard on the Shard, she’d had to call in several years of favors to get these made.

“Qua-la, why were  _ your _ knives hidden under  _ my  _ dresser?” Tieralle asked suspiciously.

“I had to hide them somewhere, because…” she trailed off as she flipped the knife up into the air, catching it with the tip of the blade held between her fingertips. She paused there for a moment, frowning. Why  _ had _ she hidden the knives? It was a while ago.

_ “Well, put them away, this is supposed to be a serious briefing.”  _ Vindassa tried to scold her.

Qualo raised an eyebrow at them, flipping the knife in the air again and catching it by the handle. She pointed at Vindassa’s crotch with the tip of the blade. “Really, Vin? How serious of a briefing is it when I can see my commander’s cock peeking out of their pants.” Vindassa looked down, exhaled deeply, and readjusted their genitals. “Besides, I’m gonna need these knives for the mission,” she continued as they fixed their pants.

_ “What? No. No knives, Qualo, we’re not killing anybody.”  _ Vindassa shot back with their cock tucked away properly.  _ “Don’t you have those metal rods I got you a few years ago? Bring those if you want something to throw.” _

“The batons? Those are for juggling, Vin. They’re made out of aluminum. Do you expect me to take on a Ta’vall soldier trying to incinerate me with a fireball by throwing a baton?” She scowled back at them.

_ “We won’t be ‘taking on’ any soldiers. If there’s conflict, it will be a quick ambush, or we’ll flee. No knives. You did just fine with a bottle earlier today, didn’t you?”  _ they insisted.

“Yeah, because Orobin’s an arrogant bitch who thought he could contain me with just his flames. He took his eyes off me, and that big, dumb, stationary forehead of his was an easy target. What’s going to happen if I’m up against Yukoi? These knives are made with a weight-to-strength rati—”   
  
_ “Qualo, please. No knives, we’re not seriously hurting anybody here.”  _ Vindassa cut her off before she could explain the aerodynamics of her knives to them. She scowled at them for a while, and eventually tucked the knife away in its pouch and shoved it across the table with an indignant glare.

_ “Anyway… the cliff, if we get a good enough push off, we can drift all the way to the pillar, and then pull ourselves along it until we reach the impact site. One thing we’ll need to do is make some eye coverings for ourselves in case the Pillar flares up while we’re right next to it.”  _ Qualo winced at that thought even as she repeated Vindassa’s words for Caiz and Tieralle. Eye coverings or not, with how bright the pillar was getting, and how quickly it got there, a flare-up would be ugly.

“This sounds awful,” Qualo grumbled, kicking her feet up onto the table. Vindassa looked at her, and she looked back at them trying to give them just the right amount of stink-eye. Vindassa nodded after a few moments of this stand-off, and then vanished.

Qualo realized what they were doing just a little bit too late to defend herself. Vindassa appeared next to her, grabbed her, and pulled her through the shadows. The two of them appeared up against one of the walls of their hideout, Vindassa roughly but nimbly grabbed her arms and positioned them so her hands were up against the wall, and two swift kicks forced her knees wide.

“H-Hey! Vin!” Qualo cried out, but their hand went between her legs, grabbing her balls and  _ squeezing. _ The breath was forced out of her lungs by the sudden shock of pain, and she was suddenly grateful that her hands were supporting some of her weight.

The pressure mounted as Vindassa slowly squeezed harder and harder until Qualo screeched in pain, her knees wobbling and body trembling. Vindassa’s voice cut through the pain in her mind like a knife.  _ “This. Is. Serious.” _

“I’m… not…” Qualo tried to form words, or thoughts, but the crushing pressure on her ballsack obliterated both attempts. Her knees trembled, and then buckled. Vindassa’s other arm went around her chest and a shadowy manifestation formed around her midsection. The two of them held her upright while Vindassa gave her testicles one final, gut-wrenching squeeze. She screeched in pain and cried, helpless in Vindassa’s grasp.

“My, my. Not often we see Qualo speechless.” Tieralle chuckled. There was a brief pause as Vindassa made some undoubtedly rude comment about her, and then Tieralle said, “Oh, I’ll bet it does.”

“That… was… hot…” Qualo finally croaked out.

“Qualo, that hurt me just to watch,” Caiz exhaled sharply and shook his head.

“Shut… up… whore…” Qualo sucked in a ragged breath. She still couldn’t feel her legs.

_ “Qualo, If you want to do this with me, then I’m your commander, and I need you to listen to me.” _

_ “Vin, we’re family, not soldiers. You just crushed my balls, that’s not exactly military discipline.”  _ Qualo used her Aspect to create her own voice in Vindassa’s head, as it was easier than speaking at just that moment.

_ “Well, now I can’t tell if you’re just trying to goad me into hurting you more. But I suppose you have a point either way.”  _ Vindassa’s voice sounded resigned.

“If I want you to hurt me, I’ll ask. Knee me as hard as you can, right now?” Qualo asked hopefully. The request was more masochistic than she was usually in the mood for, but right now seemed like—

Vindassa’s knee swiftly struck her right in her already sore and throbbing sack, and colour exploded across her vision.

***

“Taion’s Breath, Vin!” Caiz groaned loudly as Qualo totally collapsed into Vindassa’s arms. Tieralle tore her eyes away from the lovely scene of Vindassa crushing Qualo’s testicles to watch Caiz shudder and squirm. He squeezed his thighs together as though he could feel it himself.

“Oh, come now Caiz, have some sympathy for your sister. You should certainly understand the urge of being too greedy and masochistic for your own good.” Tieralle looked back and saw Vindassa delicately lifting and carrying Qualo’s limp form towards the bedroom. She followed the two of them as Vindassa took Qualo to the large mattress that the four of them shared. It wasn’t big enough for all four of them, but they never all slept at the same time so it wasn’t necessary.

“Fuck…” Qualo groaned weakly, twitching in Vindassa’s arms as she regained consciousness.

“Aw, is my poor baby girl sore? Should Mistress kiss your poor balls and make them better?” Tieralle giggled, leaning in and kissing Qualo on the cheek. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared blankly at Tieralle for a moment. Her nod was tiny, almost imperceptible, but Tieralle had seen Qualo at her most incoherent enough times to recognize it.

_ “Don’t be too cruel with her, love, I still need her to be able to walk tomorrow,”  _ Vindassa smiled at her as they handed Qualo over. Tieralle manifested her limbs, grabbing and manipulating Qualo’s limp body like a doll.

“Cruelty? From me? Such malicious accusations.” Tieralle chuckled sinisterly as she effortlessly undressed and then stood Qualo up on the mattress, raising her arms up towards the ceiling. She was a bit heavier than Caiz, but she wasn’t always constantly struggling like he was, so the task went quickly. She glanced over at the wall and created a new tendril to bring her the rope that was on a shelf there so that she wouldn’t have to continually use her Aspect to keep her aloft. The darkness swirled around Qualo’s semi-conscious form, forming and dissipating at Tieralle’s command as she tied her little sister up.

Tieralle was, in many ways, the most frail member of their little family. She’d received Taion’s blessing at the age of fifty six, and a long life of hardship and disability had not been kind to her. Becoming an Aspect had stopped her body from aging, and had empowered her in many ways, but it had not erased the past and turned her into a young woman with an unmarred body.

However, moments like this, moments where Qualo, her little firebrand, stood helpless before her, were moments that she treasured. Tieralle delicately lowered herself to a sitting position on the mattress, then adjusted Qualo’s ropes so that her crotch was at about face height.

Qualo’s cock was only about three inches long when it was hard, and when it was soft it was a compact nub that almost looked like a clitoris. Her balls, though, were each bigger than a large egg, and were tightly packed into a sack that generally stayed taut to her body. Right now, that sack was a dark red colour, and bits of purple were starting to come though. She leaned forward, and planted a single delicate kiss on the left one, which prompted an immediate reaction out of Qualo.

“A-Ahh!” Qualo whined, and then mumbled something incoherent as she twisted about in her bondage for a second.

“Wide awake, darling?” she asked with a smile, and then kissed Qualo’s other bruised testicle.

“Y-Yes! Mistress… careful… it hurts…” Qualo whined, shuddering.

“Oh, yes, I can see that. Why else would my sweet baby girl be getting soooo hard, hmm? Oh my, and you’re making  _ such _ a mess.” Even two little kisses had been more than enough to get Qualo completely stiff. Her little three-inch cock was dripping a steady stream of precum, and every time her balls twitched to pump more pre into the stream, Qualo winced in pain.

Tieralle heard a scuffle from the main room, and she glanced over to see Caiz watching, his hand down his pants. Tieralle smiled at him, and slowly parted her legs. Caiz frowned at her for a moment, and then squawked as Tieralle commanded the shadows around him to grab him and carry him forward.

“H-Hey! Tieralle! You… could have just as—” Tieralle roughly dragged the little brat across the floor and shoved his face into her pussy. She dismissed the darkness, but then clamped down on his head with her thighs, squeezing his skull until he whined in distress as he started to tease out her clitoris with his tongue.

“You’re right, slut, I  _ could _ have asked,” she chuckled as she looked over at Vindassa. “This is a much better use for his mouth, don’t you think?” Caiz’ tongue and lips gave her a gentle, mostly-pleasant buzz as he serviced her pussy. She didn’t actually  _ like  _ receiving oral all that much, but it was all right. What she mostly liked was putting Caiz in his place, and crushing his head with her thighs was a lot of fun, too.

_ “Oh, absolutely. It’s the only way to shut him up.”  _ Vindassa nodded, watching the scene unfold intently. They didn’t make a move to join the three of them just yet, though they undoubtedly knew that they were welcome to do so.

“Mistress…” Qualo whined, her hips wiggling. The stream of precum oozing out of her dick was starting to form a puddle on Tieralle’s thigh; Qualo always leaked so much.

“Oh, how negligent of me, ignoring my greedy girl for _eight_ _whole seconds_ ,” Tieralle snickered and leaned back in, planting a sloppy kiss on each of Qualo’s bruised nuts. Qualo yelped and moaned as she did, her body trembling in confused, masochistic joy. She dragged her tongue upwards along the bulbous sack, and then, with no preparation, sucked Qualo’s dick into her mouth all in one go.

“F-Fuck!” Qualo cursed and wailed. She tried to struggle and twist against her bonds, but the movement made her balls swing and strike Tieralle in the chin. The impact did nothing to harm Tieralle, but it made Qualo shriek in pain. Tieralle sucked hard on her cock, and a single twirl of her tongue around her cock made Qualo’s oversensitive little prick twitch and contract orgasmically. She started cumming without hesitation, and definitely without  _ permission _ \- which Tieralle made a mental note of.

“M-Miss… Tier… Fuck… Owwwww….” Qualo wailed and babbled incoherently as she came and came, heavy spurts filling Tieralle’s mouth up quickly. Tieralle pulled away from Qualo’s clitty with a full mouth, but Qualo continued to spurt a few more weak jets that landed on Tieralle’s tits. Tieralle looked down at Caiz, and formed a tendril around his neck, pulling him away from her pussy with a yank that made him gasp breathlessly.

“W-Wha?” Caiz looked up at her, disoriented. Tieralle didn’t give him a moment to acclimate, his mouth was wide open, and so she spat Qualo’s cum into it. Much of it ended up on his face, but enough went into his mouth that she was satisfied.

“H-Hey!” Caiz objected, but only after he’d swallowed most of it, the hypocritical little skank.

“Pardon me, whore?” Tieralle asked, tightening the noose around his neck for a moment. Her tongue darted across her lips, cleaning up the residue of Qualo’s orgasm that was dribbling down her chin.

“Thanks, Mommy…” Caiz grumbled reluctantly, and she let him go. “Uhh… can you…?”   
  
“No, I’m done with you. Go ahead and masturbate, if you want. Qualo certainly gave you plenty of lube.” She dismissed him coldly, even as he pouted. Caiz could flash doe eyes at her all he wanted, all three of them knew he got off to the bullying. Tieralle stood up so that she could be eye-to-eye with Qualo (or close enough, Qualo wasn’t as tall as she was.) Caiz put on a show of pouting and going back into the living room to masturbate.

She leaned down and kissed Qualo gently. The drained, dazed girl whimpered and kissed her back as best she could. “...Thank you, Mistress…” she whispered.

“Of course, my sweet sister. Now, get some rest, you and Vin have some work to do tomorrow.” Tieralle planted one last kiss on her cheek and then went about dismantling the bondage she’d placed Qualo into.

“Yuhh…” Qualo mumbled as Tieralle put her to bed and tucked her in, not offering any other coherent commentary as she drifted off to sleep. Crushed balls aside, Tieralle knew that Qualo had had a long day. The silly girl rarely realized how tired she was until she crashed.

_ “Can you hide the knives, while she’s out?”  _ Vindassa asked.  _ “I don’t want her bringing them.” _

“Oh? You don’t trust our little fire bug?” Tieralle asked as she returned to the living room. Caiz was softly moaning as he jerked off, hand moving in rapid circles on his clit. Tieralle ignored him and went to the table where Vindassa had been explaining their plan for the investigation.

_ “I trust her intentions, but Qualo’s never learned to control her temper. Even the calmest, most level-headed person can make bad decisions with a weapon in their hand during a moment of tension.”  _ Vindassa gathered up the leather case, and looked over at Tieralle. She took it out of their hands and tucked it back under the dresser where Qualo had hidden it in the first place. Vindassa watched her do it, and gave her an incredulous look.

“Trust me, love, she will never look there,” Tierall replied smugly as she used her Aspect to gather Qualo’s hair clippings up into a pile so that they could dispose of it later. She sat down in her typical high-backed chair as Caiz’ moans hit a higher pitch in prelude to his orgasm. “I should say, though, that the time may soon come when we no longer have ‘good’ decisions available to us. You might  _ need _ to put a knife into her hands, if it comes to that.”

_ “I…”  _ Vindassa didn’t finish the thought, they looked over towards the bed room where Qualo slumbered, and then glanced back at the dresser.  _ “I’ll keep your words in mind.”  _ They relented. Vindassa put up a good act of being the tough, stoic commander of the family, but they rarely argued with Tieralle.

“Of course you will. Now, put my dresser back, and remember what happens to your asshole if you break it.” She smiled at him sweetly, and picked up her book from the side table.

_ “Once was plenty for me, thanks…”  _ Vindassa grumbled as they grabbed the dresser.

*** 

The bridge leading to the Toira farmstead landmass was bigger than most, and, fortunately, nigh-abandoned at this time of day. Most of the bridges and ladders that connected the Shard’s landmasses were only meant for Aspects, and so were only made to accommodate one or two of them at a time. This bridge was occasionally used by carts laden with rice, so it was wide enough for one of them, complete with guide ropes to pull the cart along when gravity waned during the midpoint. As soon as gravity returned, Qualo felt the humidity hanging in the air. One of the Ta’vall’s three artificial suns hovered not far from the landmass, making the atmosphere hot and muggy. The Toira family played their part in keeping the environment as it was, though Qualo didn’t understand how that all worked.

They crossed the bridge quickly and took a hard left, heading towards the jutting pinnacle of rock that pointed towards the pillar. Qualo followed Vindassa closely as they led her through a winding path to avoid detection. Several times, they had to stop and hide behind a rock or an outcropping as a horse or other animal crossed near them. Most of the animals here were  _ probably  _ wild, but any of them could be a Toira Aspect taking animal form for any number of reasons. The only Aspect that Qualo knew would be here for sure was Apreet, who was a friend of hers, but there could be others. Besides, while she trusted that Apreet wouldn’t snitch on them, there was nothing to be gained from his knowing what they were doing.

Eventually, they reached the outcropping, and started to pick their way across the rocks. Gravity started to twist long before they reached the edge, and Vindassa soon fell to all fours and started crawling. She followed Vindassa’s example even though it felt like she could easily have stayed upright for a while still. Crawling slowly became climbing, and then, it became low-gravity climbing. The two of them pulled themselves up towards the pinnacle in swift bounds, and as Vindassa reached the top, they had to grasp a rock to keep themselves from drifting off. Qualo joined them at her own pace, and as she came up next to Vindassa, her hair was starting to float a little bit.

_ “You brought a rock, right?”  _ Vindassa asked her _. _

“Yeah, I grabbed one earlier, you watched me.” Qualo grumbled, pulling the large stone out of her pocket where it had been digging uncomfortably into her hip the whole climb.

_ “Throw it to correct your course if you drift away from the pillar.”  _ Vindassa instructed her. With a smile, they leapt straight up, their momentum carrying them towards the pillar. Qualo watched her sibling drift through the air, and grumbled a bit as anxiety crawled across her skin.  _ She  _ had been the one to insist that Vindassa take her with them.  _ She _ wanted this, she couldn’t back out now.

She hesitated anyway.

Vindassa twisted around, looking at her as they drifted further and further away, profile becoming smaller and smaller.

_ “Qualo… believe…”  _ Vindassa’s voice flickered in her mind for an instant before it cut out, they were too far away for Vindassa’s Aspect to create the hallucinatory voice properly. Qualo shook her head, letting the fear drain out of her, and leapt. The jump was both too sudden, and too slow at the same time. The ground beneath her feet vanished the instant she pushed off, hurtling her into the dangerous, drifting abyss of the Shard’s in-between spaces. And yet, though she drifted through the abyss, there was no rushing of wind, no stomach-lurching shift of momentum, just the pillar slowly growing larger ahead of her as the Toira’s farmstead grew smaller behind her.

Vindassa twisted, and hit the pillar without a sound. They folded to absorb the impact, but still bounced off a little, drifting back towards Qualo. They threw their rock backwards, gently shoving themselves back to the smooth, glassy surface of the pillar. A moment later, Qualo herself approached, and hit the pillar, splaying her hands wide to try and grip the featureless surface of the pillar. There was a moment where she too almost drifted back away, but she gently shoved her rock away, stabilizing herself.

_ “That was more difficult than I’d expected.”  _ Vindassa admitted as the two of them got settled.

“Turns out gravity is important,” Qualo agreed. She looked down the length of the pitch-black pillar and saw the strange bridge emerging out of the impact site like a cancerous growth. The bridge itself wasn’t the same kind that they made to connect the Shard’s landmasses, rather it was a tube-shaped wooden construct that the Ta’valls could use to pull and push themselves towards the impact site without drifting into the aether. It also meant that it would be difficult to spot two Aspects climbing down the pillar towards the impact site from inside, of course. 

Even if the hideous construct hadn’t been there, the path to the impact site couldn’t be more clear. Now that she was up close to the pillar, Qualo saw how silly her theory about the site being a Ta’vall fabrication really was. On the day that the pillar had been damaged, a loud, shrieking  _ crack _ had resonated throughout the entire Shard, and a spider web of fractures had spread like wildfire all across it. Now that she was this close, she could see how the cracks all converged upon the impact site, the center of the spider’s web.

Vindassa tentatively used one of the larger cracks as a handhold, and started to gently pull themselves forward. Qualo followed their example, and slowly but surely, the two of them descended (or ascended?) towards their goal.

“Why is the pillar so slippery?” Qualo grumbled as her fingers slipped loose of a crack for the third time in a row before she could get a grip. It felt strange that the centerpiece of the entire Shard could feel so insubstantial. It clearly wasn’t actually  _ made _ of obsidian, but still, it seemed like it should feel… more real.

_ “It’s not real in the same way that you and I are, or even in the same way that you and a rock are. It’s a barrier separating The Shard from Terra, so it’s not bound by the same laws as either. You cannot separate two bodies of water with more water.”  _ Vindassa answered in way too much detail.

Vindassa had been one of the Aspects who’d formed the Shard, along with representatives of the other four families who understood how magic like this worked - a quality which firmly excluded Qualo. Korbrass Ta’vall had sought Vindassa and their family out because the Taion Aspect was essential to working the magic that they needed. They’d  _ begged  _ Qualo and her family to join them in the Shard, promised them that they’d be safe from the new human uprising, promised to take care of them, shelter them, and now they’d burned that promise to ash. Burned it  _ to _ nothing,  _ for  _ nothing, used it as fuel for their irrational fear mongering.

_ “Qualo? Are you alright?”  _ The voice was an invasive thought that was Vindassa’s and not hers.

“I’m fine,” she replied snappily.

_ “You’re growling back there.” _

“Uhh…” she cleared her throat, embarrassed. She hadn’t realized that she’d been making noise. “It’s nothing, my balls still just kind of hurt.”

_ “If that were true, you’d be moaning and whimpering. Maybe I’d hear a hushed ‘Daddy’ every now and again.”  _ Vindassa did their version of a laugh which always sounded both fake and patronizing to her.

“Oh shut up, this is a serious job, I wouldn’t just start jerking off in the middle of it,” she huffed indignantly. She protested, but the thought of what Vindassa and Tieralle had done to her last night did send a little shiver down her spine. Qualo had sex with half of the Aspects in the Shard on an appointment basis, and plenty of them liked to work out sadistic urges on her, but Vindassa was the only one who... No! Focus!

_ “Ah, the heavy breathing, that’s more what I’d expect,”  _ Vindassa teased.

“Eat my ass,” Qualo shot back, wanting for a better response.

They continued climbing, and the first thing they heard as they approached the Ta’vall’s bridge was a peal of laughter, followed by a series of giggles and joking accusations. The two of them covered the last of the space between them and the impact site, and laid hands on the wood of the bridge.

_ “Be careful, this bridge probably creaks horribly. Put as little weight on it as you can.”  _ Vindassa said, and then started moving incredibly slowly, pushing themselves with one finger at a time towards the sounds of the voices. The two of them spent ten minutes travelling as many meters before Vindassa found a crack in the planks where the wood of the bridge pivoted towards the landmass upon which the Ta’vall mansion stood. Vindassa took up one spot, and then gestured to another gap for Qualo, which she slowly drifted towards. She put her eye up against the spot and looked inside.

The interior of the bridge was a jungle of ropes and wires which looked a lot easier to traverse than pulling oneself down the length of the pillar had been. There were two Ta’valls inside, one was one of Qualo’s clients from many years ago, her name was… Rita? And the other was someone that Qualo recognized but whose name she didn’t know. The two of them were playing some game she’d seen Ta’valls play where they’d use their Aspect to create a snowball and then fling it at one another and try to catch it without using their hands. Rita looked a bit disheveled, like she’d gotten hit in the face with one of the snowballs not long ago, which might have explained the laughter and the commotion.

_ “I don’t see Orobin… he’s supposed to be here…”  _ Vindassa mused.

Qualo looked around, and saw a strange bundle of cloth floating in the corner of the bridge, held in place by ropes connected to a few hard points. She used her Aspect to feel around, and sensed thoughts from within it, extremely faint ones that indicated that whomever was in there was in a very deep sleep.

_ “I think that’s him in the corner there. Might be sleeping off the headache?”  _ Qualo made her own voice in Vindassa’s mind for the sake of stealth.

The Taion aspect couldn’t sense what people’s thoughts actually were, rather the Aspect identified environments where it could create its own aberrant thoughts and vivid hallucinations. It worked much the same way that they could sense whether or not a location was dark enough for them to manifest a shadowy tendril, or a path for them to slide through the shadows. Even Caiz, who used his Aspect for little other than creating such aberrant thoughts, couldn’t read minds, though he claimed he could sometimes identify specific individuals by their thought patterns the same way one might recognize a footprint.

_ “Maybe… If Orobin is in a state like this, why even put him on guard duty, though?”  _ Vindassa asked.

_ “Maybe he didn’t even tell Kobrass. Maybe he convinced Rita and whatshisname there to let him nap on the sly.”  _ Qualo suggested.

_ “I can’t see Orobin doing that, he’s as by-the-book as it gets. But… I don’t see who else it could be.”  _ Vindassa relented, shaking their head.  _ “Alright then, the plan is going to be simple. I’ll shadow slide behind Rita and knock her out, at the same time, you take Ukra. We can do this quick and be in and out in five minutes.”  _

Ukra, right, that was his name. Qualo reached down and popped the clasp keeping her short wooden club on her belt. She’d ultimately not won the argument about bringing her knives, and also, Vindassa had hidden them on her. She had managed to convince Vindassa to lend her one of their blackjacks, though.

_ “Sounds like a plan to me,”  _ she said, gripping the weapon

_ “I’ve got a path. Go in ten seconds?”  _ Vindassa asked.

“Uhh…”  _ “...Yeah, I got one.”  _ Qualo found her path to a dark spot behind Ukra.

_ “On the count of ten, then. One. Two. Three. Four.” _

Qualo gripped her club, exhaled, and psyched herself up. She could club Ukra across the head, he wasn’t as much of a jerk as some of the other Ta’valls, but he was one of the many who awkwardly stood by as bullies like Orobin, Korbrass, and Yukoi dictated the politics of their family. Rita burst out laughing as she caught the snowball they were passing back and forth and used her Aspect to add to its mass.

_ “Five, six, seven.” _

Rita tossed the enlarged snowball towards Ukra even as he protested that it was too big. He tried to catch it with his Aspect but he ended up catching it with his hands. The impact wasn’t major, but in microgravity, he absorbed the momentum and spun backwards and off to the side.

_ “Eight. Nine.” _

Ukra bumped into one of the lanterns, the impact sending the light flickering and spinning. The shadows in the room below twisted, making Qualo lose her path. Rather than try to find a new one, she looked over at Vindassa and raised her hand towards them.

_ “Vin—”  _ Before she could suggest that they wait, Vindassa vanished. They reappeared behind Rita like a ghost, club coming down on the back of her head in one quick, efficient motion.

Qualo panicked, trying to find her path again so that she could go and deal with Ukra, but she’d lost it, and the light was still spinning. Ukra didn’t sit and gawk at Vindassa, he raised his hand and a burst of crackling electricity leapt from his fingertips. The attack struck Vindassa before they could slide through the darkness to safety. There was no noise, no groan or cry, Vindassa lacked the ability to do little more than grunt as they twisted limply about in the microgravity. Qualo’s heart nearly stopped. Fear and rage overwhelmed her, and she searched furiously for a path through the twisting shadows as the lantern’s spinning slowed. She found one, and took it without hesitation, appearing behind Ukra.

Qualo brought the club down on the back of Ukra’s head, and the force of the blow sent her flying backwards. She struck the wall as hard as she’d struck Ukra, and it drove the air out of her lungs as Ukra pitched forward.

“ _ Vin _ ! Vin are you—”

_ “I’m alright, I’m alright,”  _ Vindassa replied. Their voice  _ almost _ sounded perfectly normal. If Qualo hadn’t known them for over a hundred years, she might not have picked up on the subtle signs in their voice that indicated that they were in a lot of pain. They reached out and grabbed one of the ropes, breathing with a bit of a wheeze, and then pulled themselves over towards Rita. Vindassa grabbed her, pulled her close, and slipped something into her mouth. They patiently got her to swallow it, then went and intercepted Ukra to repeat the process.

“What’re you doing?” Qualo asked, pulling herself over and putting her hand on their shoulder.

_ “Administering a sedative, just enough to make sure they stay asleep for an hour or so.”  _ Vindassa finished making sure that Ukra swallowed the drugs and then straightened up, stretching and rubbing their muscles. Their clothes were slightly singed in a few places and it turned Qualo’s stomach to see them in pain because she’d fucked up.

“Vin, I’m so sorry, they messed with the lights an—”

_ “No. We’ll talk about it when the mission is over. We’ll talk about it to fix problems, not pin blame.”  _ Vindassa’s reply was forceful and final, but not angry. It struck her that though she’d known them for so long, she’d never  _ really _ seen this part of Vindassa. The commander, the leader, the organizer. It was a little disconcerting, and also kind of sexy.

“Right, uhh... what about Orobin? Should we drug him too?” she asked anxiously, looking over at the weird cocoon-like hammock where the big man was encased.

_ “No, Orobin might be on medication already, it’s best not to mix these things if you’re not sure what you’re doing.”  _ To be sure of their own words, Vindassa went over to Orobin’s hammock and checked on his breathing.  _ “Come on, let’s be quick, someone may have seen the flash of that Ta’vall lightning.” _

The two of them sheathed their clubs, and headed back towards the pillar. There was a sheet suspended across the length of the bridge separating the Ta’vall guard post from the pillar itself. It was starting to look a little ratty, clearly they hadn’t yet changed it since the day the pillar had cracked. Vindassa grabbed the sheet, and pulled, ripping off some of the pins that kept it in place and pulling themselves forward at the same time. Vindassa grabbed a handhold to steady themselves and just… stopped, staring.

“What’s the mat—” Qualo drifted forwards, grabbed a handhold of her own, and then stopped as she felt what it was that Vindassa was feeling. 

All the cracks in the obsidian converged upon a single point no more than a meter in diameter. A huge harpoon-like object, barbed like a massive fishing hook, protruded from  _ inside _ of it. Darkness swirled around the harpoon like a shroud, giving off the familiar energy. No, that energy, it wasn’t just familiar, it was  _ family. _

“T-That power… it’s…” Qualo whispered in disbelief.

_ “Taion’s power. One of our family members made this.” _


	3. A Fragile Ecosystem

“No. No, I didn’t… You…? Caiz?” Qualo spluttered, staring at the huge harpoon radiating the familiar magic. The feeling creeped her out, and she pushed herself away from it a little bit.

_ “No, I don’t think any of the four of us did this. Besides, the harpoon is coming from inside the pillar.”  _ Vindassa replied solemnly, staring intently at the impact site.

“So… this came from Terra? Are there Taion Aspects still alive on Terra?” she asked.

_ “If you’d asked me five minutes ago, I’d have said no to both of those. But the evidence in front of us suggests otherwise.”  _ Vindassa shook their head as if in disbelief.

“Could… could Taion have blessed more Aspects since we left, then?” she asked.

Vindassa chuckled a little bit, the deep rumbling in their chest showing off the ghost of what their voice had been before their tongue had been cut out so long ago.  _ “Perhaps, the Ancients are completely unknowable though. But if there were new Taion aspects walking about Terra, how would they know about the Shard? No, I think this is the work of our extended family. You know that our distant cousins are… tenacious.” _

“They’re a bunch of maniacs,” Qualo scoffed, crossing her arms.

_ “Qualo, please don’t be that way. Many of them made choices I’ve disagreed with, but they’re victims of circumst—” _

“Don’t even fucking start with that bullshit, Vin,” Qualo snapped. “You know how they treated Tieralle, for  _ how long  _ they treated her that way. What they  _ would _ have done to Caiz and me, if  _ you _ hadn’t stopped them.”

_ “We’re not having this conversation right now, Qualo.”  _ Vindassa shook their head, clearly distressed by Qualo’s recrimination. Vindassa had this infuriating habit of trying to see the best in everybody, even people putting them and their family through hell.  _ “I think we should go. There’s nothing else to see here. This is bad, Qualo, I was hoping that the site held proof of our innocence, not an indication of our guilt. I don’t know what we’re going to do anymore.” _

Qualo huffed and chewed on her lip a bit as the bitterness of the situation roiled in her gut. Vindassa was right about that one. She made a mental list of all the people who’d definitively told her that they believed that the Taions weren’t responsible for the damage to the pillar, and then started crossing out the names of those who might change their mind if they saw this. The list grew longer as her anxiety and self-doubt grew greater. The two fed on each other, until she was left with only a catastrophic scenario where she was defending her family alone against the entire Shard.

Qualo felt a welling of tears in her eyes, and she turned around and pushed off towards the crack in the ceiling that they’d entered from before Vindassa could see her.

“K...Kor…?” a groggy voice called from the hammock as she drifted past it. Orobin.

“I guess it’s time to go,” Qualo muttered, kicking off the floor to float herself up to the ceiling, searching for a crack that she could shadow slide through.

_ “...No. Just a moment.”  _ Vindassa held up their hand, and then pushed off, drifting towards Orobin.

“Nah. I’m fine. Thanks for coming to see me, but it’s nothing. Yeah, I’ll be up and about tomorrow.” Orobin chatted jovially but drunkenly with Vindassa’s invisible voice, probably disguised to be Korbrass’. “How’d the raid go, by the way? Did we snatch any of the Taions up?”

Qualo’s eyes went wide, and she stared intently at Vindassa, who raised a hand to still her anger as they continued their masquerade.

“Huh? How? Damn, I thought my intel was good. Yeah, landmass eighty six, had two people say they saw the little Taion walkin about there. Ugh. Back to the drawing board, I guess… Yeah, I’ll do that, see you tomorrow, Kor…” Orobin groaned and let out a long, tired breath as Vindassa looked back towards her. Landmass eighty six was where their hideout was. It was where Caiz and Tieralle were  _ right now. _

“...Fuck,” Qualo whispered.

***

“Caiz. Wake up,” Tieralle called sternly. Caiz mumbled, twisted, and buried his face in his giant pillow.

“Later, Mommy…” he mumbled. Tieralle didn’t give him even a single moment to doze back off, her dark manifestations grabbed and shook him awake with violent urgency. “ _ Taion’s accursed eyes! _ ” Caiz howled as he was tossed across the floor and rudely dragged back into the waking world.

“Caiz, be silent,” Tieralle whispered to him, suddenly kneeling next to him. “There’s someone outside, I need your help.”

“Whuh?” Caiz blinked, and then glanced over at the door. There was a sliver of light shining through the crack in the rock, and in the silence, Caiz could hear people outside. “Oh, balls,” he muttered, scampering up onto his feet.

“We can hear you in there, Taions,” A faint voice shouted at them through the crack in the rock. The boulder almost totally muffled the sound, but enough got through.

“Uhh… What do I do? I can’t fight!” Caiz hissed quietly back at Tieralle.

“Distract them. When I give you the signal, create a loud noise in their minds so they can’t tell where the cave-in is happening.” Tieralle replied, rising up to her feet and heading off into the kitchen.

Caiz raised a hand to protest, that was way too much, he couldn’t— there were too many…

“Taions! Answer me, or we see how warm it can get in there!” The voice shouted again.

“Yes! Yeah, we’re in here,” Caiz yelped, scuttling forward to get near the crack in the rock.

“Well, I didn’t expect you, Caiz. Where’s Vindassa?” The voice responded, impatient and demanding, but not as hostile as it had just been.   
  
“Uhh, they’re not here. Who’s this?” Caiz asked, glancing back at the kitchen. His eyes went wide as he saw the darkness of the cave swirling, crawling and coming to life at Tieralle’s command.

“It’s Korbrass,” they replied dourly, sounding annoyed that Caiz hadn’t recognized their voice. “Let us inside.”

“There’s no door, asshole, we shadow slide through this crack. I can’t just move the entire boulder.” Caiz sighed impatiently as he started to assess the situation outside. He sensed four… no, five Aspects outside. This was going to be hard, creating hallucinations of any kind in five different minds at once would be difficult, but giving them complexity and verisimilitude would be nigh impossible. He’d have to get creative. He sat down on the stone cross-legged and exhaled softly, preparing himself for the ordeal.

Korbrass muttered something to the other people outside, their thoughts flickering… was that disbelief? Maybe. “Who else is in there with you?” they asked.

“It’s just me,” he replied. As he did, he created an auditory hallucination in the minds of three of the Aspects, being careful to leave Korbrass out of it. He conjured the sound of clattering rocks and muffled cries of alarm. The sounds of someone running.

“Shit. Did you hear that?”

“No, nothing, it could be—”

“No, I heard it too.”

_ “Oh! I think I see them! There!”  _ The last voice, Caiz created himself in Korbrass’ mind, modelling it after one of the others who’d expressed disbelief.

“Right, Yukoi, Lai, go look. Caiz, answer me, now. Are you still in there?” Korbrass demanded.

“Yeah, I’m here. That might be Qualo, she was supposed to be back by now.” Caiz answered, trying to sound scared. It wasn’t hard.  _ “Tieralle, how much longer do I need to keep them from incinerating us?”  _ he projected the question into Tieralle’s mind.

“Caiz, darling, do you know how many tonnes of rock I’m trying to move right now?” Tieralle called back. The whirlpool of shadow that surrounded their kitchen grew denser as Tieralle continued to draw darkness from within their home, making more and more of the shadowy limbs and drawing them to her.

_ “Uhh… two?”  _ he asked.

“I can assure you, dear… it is  _ many _ more than  _ two _ . Now, shut up and let me  _ ugh.  _ Work.”

“I’m not convinced that you don’t have a secret door there, Caiz. Where is it?” Korbrass demanded.

“If we had a secret door that Qualo just used, why would I be sitting here trying to convince you not to incinerate me,” Caiz snapped back. “It’s just me and I can’t leave while you have that lantern out there.”

“Could all be an illusion, Kor,” One of the other voices suggested.

“The Taion Aspect has a limited range, same as yours, dickhead.” Caiz replied sarcastically.

“Is that…”   
  


“Yes it does, stop interrupting me, Baola,” Korbrass snipped back at their subordinate; their voice rising up a few octaves. “Alright, Caiz, we’re going to move the lantern away, and you’re going to come out. Afterwards, I’m going to blast that cave with enough heat to cook any living thing inside it, so if your family is hiding out in there, you’d better encourage them to come out with you.”

“Ten seconds, Caiz, then create the distraction. I’m almost ready,” Tieralle’s voice called out, she sounded strained.

“Uhh… Kor, if you burn all of Tieralle’s stuff, she’s going to murder me anyway. Can’t you just move the rock? Did you really not bring a single Tukkiqa with you?” Caiz asked nervously. 

“No, it’s not the Tukkiqa family’s job to keep the pea— Aagh!  _ You little fucker _ !” Caiz created a screeching cacophony in the minds of Korbrass and their two remaining siblings. The hallucinatory assault would be extremely distracting and make communication hard so long as he maintained it, but it wasn’t dangerous or seriously detrimental. It was also a significant strain to maintain three separate ones at once with no break.

“Tieralle, distraction’s up!” Caiz shouted, no longer fearing that the Ta’valls would hear him. He backed up from the boulder as far as he could go before he got out of range of the three Ta’valls’ minds. No sooner had he done so that a jet of flame burst through the crack in the wall. Caiz shuddered at the sight of it. If he’d been much closer, it might well have killed him; Korbrass wasn’t playing around. The heat of the flames quickly spread through the cave, the heat flushing Caiz’ face as he covered his mouth to protect himself from the smoke.

The ground rumbled, and Tieralle yelled, though not from the heat or the smoke. Stone split and rocks crashed and slammed into one another with deafening thunder that the Ta’valls outside would definitely feel, even if they couldn’t hear from where it was coming. The shaking ground made Caiz fall flat on his ass, and he crawled on his knees towards the kitchen and Tieralle. Another rumble preceded a thunderous percussion, and Tieralle cried out in pain as Caiz crawled towards her. She stumbled backwards out of the kitchen, followed by a cloud of dust and a few small bits of rocks and rubble. She fell, unable to sustain her balance, and hit the dusty floor with a thud.

“Tieralle!” Caiz cried, letting the cacophonous racket in the Ta’valls’ minds dissipate to nothingness as he rushed to her side.

“I’m fine. Help me up,” Tieralle replied weakly, her breathing heavy. Caiz grabbed her and helped her back onto her unsteady feet.

“A-Are you sure? Maybe we should jus—”

“Don’t you dare suggest that we surrender. I’m not quite so helpless, I can climb,” Tieralle assured him, but Caiz could see that both of them had their doubts. He glanced up at the hole she’d torn through several meters of nearly solid rock. The path led to a canyon on the other side of the little cliff, and it would take the Ta’valls a few minutes to go all the way around to cut them off, even if they knew exactly where to go. He gawked at the sight for a little bit. Tieralle and Vindassa had built this hideout, and he’d heard them talking about the emergency exit, but seeing it, seeing Tieralle rip this much stone apart was… something else.

“A-Alright, come on, I’ll help you.” Caiz put his arm around Tieralle’s waist and helped her up. When it proved not to be enough, he created a shadowy tendril of his own, wrapping it around Tieralle’s waist and using it to support her as the two of them climbed through the loose rubble and stone. As they approached the mouth of the cave, Caiz felt a mind not far, and immediately enwrapped it with a vision of utter darkness and a deafening screech. He added some silhouettes of him running away on just the edge of their vision for good measure. The two of them emerged out into the dim sky of the Shard, and started climbing out of the canyon. As they reached the lip of the canyon, the darkness of their home was punctuated by the light of a trail of blazing campfires that the Ta’valls had set up along the path to the main bridge on and off the landmass. It was shocking to see, wood was sparse on the Shard, burning it like this was… excessive and wasteful. The Toiras would never approve. How far off-script was Korbrass going just to capture them?

“The third secret bridge, I think,” Tieralle said, panting and wheezing softly even after a short climb. Caiz put his hand to her forehead, and she pulled away from him as he did. The brief contact was enough for him to feel how hot she was. Without arms to dissipate extra body heat, Tieralle was particularly susceptible to heat stroke. He glanced over at the Ta’vall whom he’d wrapped in a hallucination. She wasn’t moving but she was shouting, and it wouldn’t take long for her to bring her comrades. Caiz couldn’t distract all of them like this, creating a complete auditory and visual flood was a lot of work. He was just grateful that she wasn’t shooting off jets of flame in every direction to try and hit the two of them with a lucky shot.

The two of them ran, Caiz catching and supporting Tieralle when she stumbled. As they moved, a Ta’vall again managed to get close to them, but Caiz blinded them and misled them with hallucinations until they were too turned around to remember which way they’d been going. Caiz whined as they reached the bridge, the extremely heavy-handed usage of his Aspect was starting to give him a splitting headache that he knew would morph into a migraine if he kept it up. Worse, was that Tieralle was already huffing and puffing from the brief dash. With her being so strong, he couldn’t stop and take a break.

The bridge they were headed for was one they’d made themselves, a flimsy setup of ropes that suspended wooden planks between them. The Tukkiqa family built almost everything in the Shard with the help of their Aspect, so for the four of them to set up bridges of their own was a monumental task, and the quality of it reflected that.

“Come on, Tieralle, you first, I’ve got you,” Caiz urged her on, even as her breathing was starting to develop a sick-sounding rasp. “We’ll go slow,” he added.

Tieralle manifested a limb and wrapped one end around one of the guide ropes, wrapping the other around her waist. She used the limb like a tether to help her keep her balance, walking several steps across the bride and then forming another to connect her to another section of the bridge. It was slow going, and Caiz had not a lot of hope that the bridge and their progress across it would help them remain hidden for long. Heck, even if a Ta’vall brought their Aspect’s flames close enough, it’d dissipate TIeralle’s tether and she might fall, Caiz would have to catch her, they’d hear the commotion.

Mercifully, the air currents of the Shard were calm around their former home today, and the bridge wasn’t tossing and swaying much in the breeze. As gravity waned, the trip became a bit easier, and soon Tieralle was gliding steadily and surely along the bridge, and Caiz let himself relax a little. Gravity from their destination kicked in, pulling them downwards a little, and again, the two of them slowed, carefully managing their descent downwards. The bridge’s connection to the landmass was steeper on this side than it had been on their ascent.

“Stop right there, Lady and little Taion,” A clear voice called from behind them, and in a panic, Caiz turned around to try and blind the source. Yukoi stood on the bridge just outside of Caiz’ range, her silhouette outlined by fire. For a moment, Caiz was struck by Yukoi’s precision and control, that she could evoke her flames so potently without harming the bridge. Not only that, she knew exactly where to stand to render Caiz’ hallucinations ineffective, while still being in range to bring her flames to bear against them.

“Yukoi, darling, step off the bridge, I don’t want you getting hurt.” Tieralle called back. She slowly turned around, standing tall even in the twisted gravity. Caiz watched her with wide eyes, completely unsure of what to do.

“I didn’t think bluffs and deception were your forte, Lady Taion. Just stay right there until Korbrass and the others get here, I don’t want to use my Aspect against you.” Yukoi glanced over her shoulder, undoubtedly searching for her comrades.

“Oh, I know you don’t, darling. Hold onto me tightly, little one,” Tieralle murmured the last part to Caiz, and he didn’t need the encouragement to wrap his arms tightly around her waist.

“T-Tieralle, I’m…” he whispered, and then he saw what she was doing. A mass of shadowy tendrils roiled and writhed upon the surface of the landmass below them like a malevolent beast. They seized the bridge, grabbing onto planks, ropes, and the stakes they’d driven into the ground. With a single, powerful motion, Tieralle tore the bridge apart, shredding rope and snapping wooden planks. The shattered bridge they were still standing on was pulled on by the gravity of the landmass they’d come from, while everything not connected to it was pulled the other direction by the landmass below them - including Tieralle and Caiz. The plank Caiz was standing on was torn out from under his feet even as they plummeted towards the ground, and he shrieked in terror even as he heard Yukoi cursing angrily. Caiz squeezed his eyes shut and screamed, expecting to fall to his death.

“Caiz, darling, you can stop now,” Tieralle said, her voice exhausted, but not dead.

“W-Whuh?” Caiz sniffled, opening his eyes. A second later, he saw that Tieralle had safely caught them with her shadowy limbs. She set the two of them down on the ground gently, and Caiz looked up to see Yukoi’s burning silhouette on the landmass above them. She was yelling something, but they were far enough away now that it was hard to hear her.

“...Oh.”

“Yes, Oh. We do need to move, however. It also feels like you’re going to need a change of underwear.”

“I do no—” even as he protested, Caiz realized that he had actually peed himself. He blushed bright red as Tieralle looked down at him with a kindly smile. “Uhh… could we maybe not tell Qualo about this?”

“First darling, we need to get to safety. You remember the escape route, I trust?” Tieralle sighed and took a deep breath. As tired and scared as Caiz was, she was clearly exhausted.

“Uhh… yeah, it’s this way. Let’s go,” Caiz cleared his throat, and tried to stay composed.

The two walked as swiftly as they could through the long grass of the new landmass as they made their way to the next bridge. They were quiet for several minutes before Tieralle spoke up with an amiable, “There is, of course absolutely no way that I won’t be telling Qualo that my baby boy peed his pants.”

“Yeah, I know you won’t,” Caiz grumbled bitterly.

***

“So, what do we… actually  _ do  _ about the harpoon?” Qualo asked Vindassa as the two of them climbed down the mountain on the Toira farmstead.

_ “I’m not sure that trying to remove it would make things better. The magic that sustains the Shard isn’t so frail, maybe the harpoon will break before the Shard does. Maybe it tears the Shard apart, and it kills all of us.”  _ Vindassa mused grimly. Gravity twisted as they spoke, the mountain they were climbing down becoming less and less of a mountain. They tentatively stopped climbing down and started stepping down, becoming more and more horizontal as the Shard’s warped gravity twisted their sense of ‘down.’

“Well, that sounds lovely.  _ Fuck me _ !” Qualo shouted the curse loudly, her frustration bubbling up to the surface.

_ “Qualo! Keep your voice down, we don’t know who else might be around,”  _ Vindassa scolded her.

“Oh, whatever. It sounds like the Ta’valls are all trying to murder our family, anyway, they won’t be waiting to ambush us here,” Qualo dismissed Vindassa’s concern with a wave of her hand.

_ “Still, we shou—”  _ There was a rustle in the bushes, and Vindassa stopped talking to quickly take a step towards Qualo and put a hand on her shoulder so that they could slip through the shadows and take her with them. A horse emerged from around a tree, its hooves clopping gently against the rocks, and snorted at the two of them.

Vindassa and Qualo shared a look. The animal could just be wild. They’d have no way of knowing, unless…

“Nice cock,” Qualo called out at the beast. The horse snorted again, shaking its head.

_ “Qualo,”  _ Vindassa elbowed her.

“What? He laughed, that means he’s a Toira. Is that you, Apreet?” Qualo rolled her eyes.

The horse closed his eyes, and the flesh and hair of its head started to shift and melt, twisting into new shapes. Two arms and a chest emerged from the amorphous flesh, and then a head. The morphing features took on definition that at first was only vaguely human, then definitively human, and then, very familiar. Apreet blinked his human eyes at Qualo, and then neighed at her. Qualo snort-laughed at him as he rolled his eyes, and the flesh around his throat shifted as he rearranged it into human vocal chords.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said, his voice a little rough. He walked a little closer, leaving his lower body equine. Half-animal forms like this were the source of many human rumours and legends on Terra, but ‘centaur’ sightings were all just Toira Aspects who chose to linger in the form for some reason or another. “What exactly are you two doing here?” he asked.

_ “Is he trustworthy?”  _ Vindassa asked her silently.

“Yeah, Apreet’s no Ta’vall bootlicker,” Qualo assured her sibling. “We were, uhh…” she hesitated, glancing back at the shelf of rock they’d just climbed down. Could Apreet tell where they’d come from? Should she just tell him?

“Were you checking out the impact site?” Apreet answered her suspicions quietly, his tail swishing against the underbrush.

“Uhh, yeah, but the Ta’valls are raiding our home, we have… to…” Qualo trailed off. What were they going to do now? They couldn’t just go home.

“I know. They made their move four hours ago, the news is all over the Shard at this point.” Apreet informed them. He glanced over at Vindassa and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think they took any prisoners. My sister Ajna spotted the raiding party moving onto an abandoned landmass, and it didn’t take much guessing as to why they were there. She didn’t see anybody getting captured. I think Korbrass would have paraded them around if he’d caught anybody, and there’s been none of that according to Ajna.”

“Oh thank fuck,” Qualo breathed a sign of relief, inferring what Vindassa must have asked Apreet from his answer. “That means they’re probably at the backup meeting place, right?”

_ “...Yes. That’s all the way across the Shard, though. It’s going to be a trip,”  _ Vindassa replied dourly, frowning at Qualo. They probably weren’t fond of how loose Qualo was being with Apreet around, but they also didn’t know him. Apreet wasn’t exactly the boldest Aspect on the Shard, but he was Qualo’s friend.

“So… can I ask what you saw at the impact site? Is the pillar alright?” Apreet asked. Vindassa gave him a look, grimaced a little, then met Qualo’s eyes, and nodded.

“We don’t know. It doesn’t look good, though,” Qualo answered honestly. Apreet nodded, looking thoughtful.

“You know, Qualo…” Apreet murmured, his voice cautious. “If you all  _ were _ trying to break the pillar…”

“We’re not,” Qualo snapped angrily at him. Was Apreet doubting her? Seriously? He raised his hands in defeat to indicate that he wasn’t.

“Okay, I believe you,” He said, sighing. He sounded… disappointed? “But… if you were, there are those of us in my family that would understand.”

“What??” Apreet winced at the tone in Qualo’s voice, and the glance he gave towards Vindassa indicated that they’d had a similar response. Qualo had no idea what he was even trying to get at.

“No, I mean…” Apreet sighed. “It’s hard to explain to someone outside the family... and I’m not supposed to tell you.” Qualo opened her mouth, but no words came out. She had none.

  
“Whatever, we have a long way to go, and I’m tiii–” Even as she said it, Qualo yawned. They’d been on that pillar for hours both there and back. Apreet had a way of vaguely waxing poetic about things and then never answering the question.

  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to lead you on,” Apreet apologized, blushing. “But if you’re that tired, I have a barn you can stay in for the night. Might be better to rest right now anyway, I’m sure the Ta’valls are scouring the Shard for your family members.

“Uhh, thanks Apreet, but we gotta—”   
  
_ “No, I think it’s a good idea. They’ll be watching the bridges right now, but the Ta’valls lack the numbers to keep it up. It’s better if we lay low for a bit.”  _ Vindassa addressed her, and then looked up at Apreet and probably said something to him.

“Oh, okay. It’s… more of a barn than a house, but it’s private, follow me,” Apreet turned around somewhat awkwardly with his hybrid body and started moving. Vindassa followed him. Qualo waited for Apreet to pass into the shadows of a tree, and slid through the shadows, appearing on his back and mounting him.

“Hey!” Apreet jumped in surprise, the buck almost throwing Qualo off, but she grabbed hold of him with her legs. He twisted his human torso and frowned at her. “...really?”

“Giddyup,” Qualo said with a grin, and when he didn’t move, she reached back and slapped his ass.

“That is  _ so  _ rude,” Apreet grumbled, and then started walking again.

“Hey, you never paid me back after the last time we fucked, so this is the new price.” Qualo chided him.

“That’s not my fault! You went into hiding!” Apreet protested.

“That’s why I’m not charging you  _ two _ horseback rides in interest,” she replied smugly.

“Well, if a ride is all you want in exchange for sex I guess I’ll consider that a good deal,” Apreet twisted his neck to try and smile flirtily at her, and immediately walked into a branch. Qualo burst out into a fit of cackling laughter, and Apreet sighed in embarrassment.

“Aww, don’t worry Pre-Pre, we can negotiate something once all this is over, I miss you too,” Qualo squirmed a little bit forward and leaned in to Apreet’s human torso. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her tits into his back. She felt him shiver a little bit at the attention.

_ “Slut.” _

“Eat my ass seven different times, Vin.” She looked over at her sibling and stuck her tongue out at them.

_ “Sounds like I’ll have to get in line,” _ they replied.

“Wooow, Apreet, you can’t hear it, but Vindassa is  _ super  _ jealous of you right now. They should be, you can make your dick bigger at will, after all.” Apreet coughed and spluttered, blushing at Qualo’s comment. She cackled happily as both Apreet and Vindassa shook their heads. Vindassa’s cock was actually really big for a human, but she was a size queen. She settled in for the ride, which ended up not being very long. Apreet’s ‘barn’ was a small hut-like building on a hill that had a perfect view of the shelf that Qualo and Vindassa had climbed. It was a small wonder how Apreet had spotted them, they’d have stuck out like a sore thumb from this viewpoint.

Inside the barn was some hay, a water trough, a little box tucked away in the corner, and a  _ huge _ mattress. Qualo slid off Apreet’s back and landed on the mattress, and gasped.

“Apreet, is this  _ cotton?” _ she demanded.

“Yeah, grew it myself. I… like it, even when I’m not in human form.” He seemed strangely sheepish about it.

“Why didn’t we ever hook up at your place, if you have this? Damn, this is sooo nice.” Caiz had worked his ass off to get enough cotton from the Toiras to make his gigantic pillow that he slept on. Apreet’s huge mattress was probably six times as much of the material. Vindassa didn’t say anything, they just went and laid down on the mattress, letting out a happy sigh of their own.

“The other Toiras would make fun of me if they knew I had it,” Apreet grumbled, still sounding embarrassed. “They think it’s silly when you mix human decadence with animal forms.”   
  
“So what you’re saying is I have blackmail material on you, then?” Qualo asked, sitting up. Apreet scowled at her and she grinned. “I’m joking. You are going to have to tell us what you meant about bringing the Shard down, though.”

Apreet bit his bottom lip, and fidgeted a little, the human fidgeting and the horse fidgeting mixing together in an awkward but strangely cute way.

“Okay… well.... My family, we take ecosystem preservation very seriously. Not just because we need an ecosystem to survive, but it’s… a sort of sacred duty. We keep the natural order, that’s what Toira wanted us to do, that’s why she gave us these gifts.” Apreet looked to the side as he explained what Qualo mostly already knew. The bit about Toira ‘wanting’ them to do this, though, that stuck out to her. She’d always thought that the Ancients were enigmatic to the point of being unknowable. She’d never for an instant deigned to believe that she knew what Taion wanted for her or her family.

“Yeah, so, isn’t taking care of the Shard a part of this… sacred duty?” Qualo inquired, scooting a bit closer.

“Well… That’s not so simple. We take care of the Shard’s ecosystem, yes, but it’s not natural, it’s abnormal. It’s like taking care of an elaborate aquarium. We can do it but it’s not… not the same; it’s not our calling.” Apreet cleared his throat, and looked up nervously at the two of them. “...Or, so some of us believe, anyway.”

“So you’re saying that you… miss Terra?” Qualo asked. That made sense, she missed Terra too sometimes, but she got the feeling that wasn’t the whole of it.

Apreet’s entire humanoid body saged at the question like he was a marionette and the query had severed all his strings at once. “I miss Terra  _ so much _ ,” he groaned. “But… that’s not even the main reason. The Shard’s ecosystem, it’s fragile, and a while ago… we… uhh… broke it.” he trailed off into a barely audible mumble for the last bit.

“You  _ what?”  _ Qualo asked, and she was pretty sure Vindassa did too.

“ _I_ _didn’t!_ We did. All hundred and six of us. And, yeah, that’s the part I’m not supposed to tell you. I could explain exactly what happened but it’s very complicated. The short version is that we’ve got… maybe ten years before crops start failing. Fifty years before the Shard is totally uninhabitable. There are those of us amongst the Toira who think that we should take the Shard down before that starts happening. Of course, there won’t be any consensus for that until crops actually start failing.”

_ “Well, today has been a day of absolutely fantastic revelations,”  _ Vindassa said with an exhalation.

“Yeah, turns out we’ve got  _ two _ armageddons on the horizon.” Qualo replied, laughing grimly.

“Sorry to burden you two with all this. I shouldn’t have—”

“We asked, don’t blame yourself,” Qualo shut down Apreet’s pity party, and stretched. She shimmied out of her pants, and then discarded her shirt, tossing the two into a pile on the side of the barn. She caught Apreet looking at her tits, and gave them a squeeze, winking at him.

“Such a tease…”   
  
_ “What a tease my whore of a sister is,”  _ Vindassa’s comment overlapped with Apreet’s.

“Vin, Unlike me, I know that you  _ don’t  _ like having your balls pun—” Apreet flopped down on the huge mattress next to her, his increased weight almost popping her up into the air. His bulk separated her from Vindassa, preventing her from giving her sibling a dirty look in response to their playful teasing.

Qualo shook her head and settled in, closing her eyes and trying not to worry too much about Caiz and Tieralle. Caiz was a huge baby, but he could easily weave hallucinations, fears and nightmares in the Ta’valls minds. If he didn’t want them to catch him, they’d be hard pressed to pin the real him down. He’d keep Tieralle safe, and Tieralle would keep him focused and stop him from panicking or crying. She believed in them.

As her thoughts wandered, she inhaled, and nearly coughed at the pungent smell of sweat coming from Apreet. Qualo had always found that shapeshifted Toira had a strong smell to them that wasn’t fully bestial, but it definitely wasn’t human. She tried to ignore it, but as she breathed in another lungful, her body reacted. A shiver went down her spine, and a little wet spot formed in her underwear as her cock leaked a bead of precum.

“Hey, Apreet, can you like… turn that off, or something?” she asked, adjusting her little cock in her pants so that the sensitive head wasn’t rubbing against the rough fabric.

“I’m not going back to fully human, it’s too much work, and if I go back equine it’ll be—”

“No, I mean the fucking musk you’re spraying me with right now. It’s really strong.” she grumbled.

There was a moment of silence as Apreet twisted slightly in the bed, his human torso turning so that he could look directly at her. She looked right back at him with a scowl. “Wait a second… are you saying that the smell of my ass-sweat is turning you on, Qualo?” he finally asked.

“I am  _ not—”  _ she trailed off, looking over and seeing that Apreet’s puffy, ballooned asshole was less than a foot from her head. She blushed bright red as her nostrils flared with the Toira’s scent.

“Wow, I knew you liked eating ass, Qualo, but I didn’t know you’d be into something like this,” Apreet chuckled. There was a moment of silence, and then he burst out laughing. Qualo sat up and glared at Vindassa as they pointedly ignored eye contact. They had definitely just called her a slut in Apreet’s mind.

Qualo decided not to let the two of them gloat and tease her, she twisted herself onto all fours, crawled forward, and stuck her face right in Apreet’s taint, inhaling deeply and letting the smell of half-human sweat fuel her lust and cloud her mind. One of her hands went down and deftly dived under the waistband of her panties, freeing her cock and balls from their prison as the other grabbed one of Apreet’s huge, leathery nuts and brought it up to her lips for a sloppy kiss.

“Oh, Toira… she just… Yeah, you warned me…” Apreet groaned as Qualo made out with his huge balls. A few seconds later she heard muffled moans from him, and quickly realized that he and Vindassa had probably started making out.

Her cock and balls freed from her panties, Qualo grabbed both of Apreet’s heavy testicles, one in each and buried her face in them. She sucked Apreet’s heavy, leathery scrotum into her mouth and let it fall out with a wet  _ pop _ before running her tongue all over his nutsack. The heavy, musky, dirty smell and taste of him was driving her wild and she fluctuated between her desire to worship Apreet’s huge nuts and to just reach down and jerk herself off. She fought the second urge, she was in such a riled up state that she’d probably explode immediately, and she wanted to give Apreet the treatment he deserved.

She gave each of his huge testicles one final deep kiss before she moved her hands down to grasp the base of his huge horse cock and give it a firm squeeze. She moved her face up into Apreet’s taint, burying her nose in there and inhaling deeply. She let herself enjoy the anticipation of the moment, let Apreet’s stink and filth invade her brain until she couldn’t even think of doing anything else other than worship him. Right before she moved, she heard Apreet moaning, his makeout session with Vindassa interrupted.

Qualo dragged her tongue up along Apreet’s taint and paused just above his puffy, twitching donut for just a moment before burying her nose in there and inhaling deeply, filling her lungs with Apreet’s inhuman smell. Apreet’s back legs moved with an involuntary twitch as she moved her hands downward. She grabbed the rapidly hardening equine cock that was sliding out of its sheath with both hands. Slowly and teasingly, she started to stroke the massive cock, the pink flesh flushing with blood and filling her hands up so that jerking Apreet off quickly became a job that required her full strength. The idea simmered in the back of her mind that one day she was going to have to convince Apreet to fuck her with a cock this size, with those huge balls of his, he could probably  _ flood  _ her with cum.

Qualo planted her lips on Apreet’s asshole and gave it a chaste peck, then another, then a deeper kiss, and soon she was mashing her face into Apreet’s sweaty butthole and running her tongue along every inch and every ridge of it. She sealed her lips around the puffy donut and sucked with her entire diaphragm, drawing the rubbery flesh into her mouth. She tried to slip her tongue into the ring of muscle, but it resisted entry for a moment. Qualo moaned into Apreet’s asshole, sucking hard and stabbing her tongue into it repeatedly until the tip of it entered his rectum.

“Oooh… she’s really… Oh? Yeah, I’d like -  _ Mrrrph.”  _ There was a wet sucking sound from Apreet’s human half, which probably meant that Vindassa was getting their dick wet. She stroked and rubbed Apreet’s cock with both hands, right hand moving down until she reached the wet, flared head. She rubbed the head by moving her open palm in circles, applying firm pressure. Equine precum was copiously leaking out of Apreet’s urethra, coating her fingers and oozing between the cracks until it dripped off her hands. She dug her thumb gently into the tip of Apreet’s urethra, and immediately a tremor ran through his body. His legs kicked gently, and his asshole flexed and winked. She used the moment of relaxation to dive in deeper, spearing her tongue as deep into Apreet’s greasy rectum as it would go. She closed her eyes as the flesh of Apreet’s asscheeks engulfed her face.

She sucked and stroked, drowning herself in asshole. Her hands and mouth worshipped the huge being as they were supposed to, the half-beastial man using her for her intended purpose - to get off. She came up for air with a gasp and a wet pop. Her vision swam a little bit as she refilled her lungs equal parts oxygen and Apreet’s scent. She tightened her grip on his cock and gave it several more forceful strokes as she leaned it and kissed Apreet’s spit-soaked puffy hole like it was a long-lost lover. Every tiny stroke (which wasn’t that tiny, really) made Apreet’s huge body twitch and shudder.

“Come on, big boy, cum for me…” Qualo whispered encouragingly even as she heard Apreet and Vindassa’s groans start to hit a crescendo. She suckled gently on Apreet’s ass as she focused her strength on jerking off a cock bigger than her arm. When Apreet’s cock twitched and pulsed, it was such a powerful reaction that she couldn’t have not noticed. A moment later, her hand was absolutely drenched with horse cum. She used the slippery discharge to keep stroking him, her wet hands making loud  _ schlicking  _ sounds as Apreet’s huge body twitched and shuddered to the movements of her comparatively tiny hands. His hindlegs weakly kicked at nothing as the huge pillar of meat pulsed and drained his massive balls with what must have been a bucket of cum. Qualo planted her lips firmly on Apreet’s asshole and gave it one final, deep, loving tonguing as she squeezed the last drops of cum out of his huge, apple-sized balls.

She heard Apreet audibly gulping as he swallowed something - probably Vindassa’s cum, and then he gasped. “Toira’s bloody fangs…”

Qualo gave Apreet’s cock one final finishing squeeze, and then reached down with her cum-soaked hand to jerk herself off. She was high on Apreet’s scent and the pleasure of making such a huge being cum and whimper so helplessly. She shuddered as she wrapped her wet hand around her narrow shaft, knowing that she wouldn’t last long at all.

In an instant, Vindassa was next to her, roughly grabbing her elbow and yanking her hand away. “Nooo!” Qualo cried out in frustration, her hips pumping in a desperate attempt to fuck her own cum-soaked hand.

_ “Oh, no no no, Qualo. Tieralle told me you were a bad girl earlier and came without her permission.”  _ Vindassa chided her.

“Nooo, That’s not… I didn’t…” She trailed off as the events of last night flooded back to her. She replayed the events of Tieralle sucking on her cock ten times, each time hoping that she’d have some memory of asking her Mistress for permission, but none of them did. She  _ had  _ been a bad girl.

_ “Don’t you lie to me, Qualo.” _

“But… Daddy I… Ugh, please, can I cum anyway? Pleeeeease? I’ll make it up to Mistress later?” Qualo begged. She realized that Apreet was watching the two of them, but didn’t care. All she wanted to do was cum.

_ “Aw, my whore wants to hump her nasty cum-soaked hand until she adds her sad little dribbles to the huge load Apreet just shot, huh?”  _

“Yesss, please Daddy, can I? I’ll make it up to Mistress later, I swear!” She squirmed, and begged Vindassa again, only barely resisting the urge to try and forcefully tear her arm out of their grip.

_ “Tempting, but, no, I don’t think so. You cum after you make it up to Tieralle, she isn’t running a bank.”  _ Vindassa answered with a sense of horrible finality.

“Aaaahh!!” Qualo cried out in frustration. Vindassa let her go, but she didn’t try to cheat, she just flopped down on the mattress, horny and frustrated.

“Is… everything alright?” Apreet asked. He did his best to sound concerned, but all Qualo heard was the happy satisfaction of someone who’d just had an orgasm. Jerk.

“I’m a bad girl,” Qualo huffed indignantly, crossing her arms and  _ not _ using the rapidly-cooling cum on her right hand to bring herself to orgasm like she wanted to. She could already feel her swollen balls start to ache a little bit.

“Oh, uhh…” Apreet trailed off, and looked over at Vindassa. “Ooooh! Well, alright then?”

_ “Now, give Apreet a good night kiss and thank him for letting you suck on his ass, whore,”  _ Vindassa laughed good-naturedly at her, and then laid down on the mattress near where Apreet’s human torso was.

Qualo leaned back in and planted a final, deep kiss on Apreet’s asshole. She lingered there a little bit, feeling the torturous pressure in her erect cock, and then pulled away. “That was fun, Pre-Pre, let’s do it again some day. Maybe we’ll see if you can fuck me,” she did her best to not take her frustration out on Apreet, who’d never been anything but great to her. 

“S-Sounds good…” Apreet said through a yawn. He exhaled with deep contentment, and Vindassa made a similar noise a second later. He’d cum too, the bastard. Qualo did her best to relax in Apreet’s big fluffy mattress, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to sleep especially well tonight.

***

Vindassa sat on the roof of Apreet’s barn, watching the wind blow through the grass and the trees of their landmass. They watched, but they didn’t watch - their mind halfway between reconnaissance and meditation. The old Vindassa would never have slept with enemies hunting for them, they’d have insisted upon a watch rotation. The old Vindassa would have run circles around Korbrass. Undermine. Sabotage. Destabilize. The Ta’valls would have turned upon Korbrass themselves in less than a week. The old Vindassa… would have left their family behind, because they were a liability. They shook their head. That person was long gone, but the old habit of keeping one eye open even in a situation like this yet lingered.

Their hand went up to their jawline, and idly traced the path of the scar there. Their fingers traced across the chipped bone and puckered flesh where two hundred years ago the tip of a halberd had caught them. The blade had ripped their tongue out and shorn off a large section of their face, only narrowly missing their throat. The wound had been so gruesome that their attacker had presumed them to be dead on the spot, instead of merely dying slowly of blood loss from that wound and ten others less severe.

In that deathly twilight, a presence had invaded Vindassa’s mind, speaking to them in incomprehensible words, images of jumbled, impossible geometry, and a dark and curious intent. Vindassa had thought it was a vision that would be the precedent of their death, but instead, the presence had left Vindassa alive. Alive, but changed. It had been Taion bestowing his blessing upon them, and it had saved their life.

Taion only blessed those who were on the brink of death. The Ancients were beyond mortal understanding, but they did have their quirks. Perhaps Taion chose to make Aspects out of dying mortals, and perhaps it was a limitation of his. Whichever it was, neither Vindassa nor any of their siblings, close or distant, had ever felt the Ancient’s presence more than once.

A white speck, nearly invisible against the chaotic sky of the Shard, moved in a way that caught Vindassa’s attention. They pulled themselves out of their morose contemplation to watch it. It looked like a bird - which probably meant it was a Toira Aspect. The large bird glided upon the Shard’s air currents in a winding path that was unmistakably headed towards the barn. Even with avian eyes, Vindassa doubted that the Toira could see them just yet, few animals had vision as sharp in the dark as a Taion Aspect.

Even so, Vindassa slid down a bit lower to watch, but as they did, they heard Qualo yawning and muttering something sleepily. They kept watch as Apreet also roused and headed out of the barn, mumbling something that probably only he could hear.

“Is there any water around here? My mouth tastes like ass,” Qualo called out to Apreet, and Vindassa felt a laugh rumble in their chest. The stoic lookout melted away in just that very instant, chased away by their love for their crass little sister. The old Vindassa would have left Qualo to die long ago, and that was why they weren’t worth recapturing.

The bird flew closer, and Vindassa slid through the shadows to a nearby tree so that they could watch it approach. They saw Qualo emerge from the barn, not wearing her shirt yet, but she’d at least elected to put her pants back on. “What are yo— AAHH!!”

Qualo screamed in surprise as the massive bird swooped down and landed on the roof of the barn with a clatter of webbed feet and a burst of wind. This close, Vindassa could see that it was a huge albatross with snowy white feathers, black accents around the wings, and a bright yellow beak. It peered at the two of them with black beady eyes, and cocked its head to the side.

“Taion’s breath, Ajna, you scared the shit out of me!” Qualo glared at her as Apreet started giggling. Ajna squawked at them, and then started tapping one of her talons against the wood in a series of precise clacks. The tapping was a cypher called Gur-rai-san that the Toira had invented back on Terra for communicating whilst in animal form. Specific series of taps translated to specific letters. Vindassa had a rudimentary understanding of Gur-rai-san, but Toira Aspects were typically reluctant to teach it to outsiders.

“What’s she saying? I don’t speak Toira,” Qualo looked over at Apreet for a translation, and Vindassa had to redouble their efforts so as not to laugh at how adorable she was.

“It’s not called ‘Toira,’ it’s Gur-rai-san. And, wait, you don’t know it?” Apreet gave her a look of utter disbelief.

“No, why would I?” she asked, crossing her arms.

_ “Languages are useful,”  _ Vindassa slid through the shadows again, appearing almost right next to Qualo. They provided Qualo with the obvious answer, as it looked like Apreet wouldn’t be providing one.

“Do you know it, Vin?” she asked, rolling her eyes at them. Apreet jumped a tiny bit when Vindassa appeared out of nowhere like a ghost, but Qualo didn’t even bat an eyelash. Even as she asked it, and Vindassa prepared their answer, they could see her wince a little bit. She knew.

_ “Of course I understand Gur-rai-san,”  _ The predictable answer came.

“Oh, hey Vindassa,” Apreet realized who the ghost was, and gave Vindassa a smile and a shy little wave. Vindassa returned the smile and the wave, wondering if Apreet was nervous because of the situation, or if it was because of the sex they’d had last night. They’d have to ask Qualo later; if flirting was a language, that girl could write a book in it. Ajna squawked angrily at them as their voices drowned out her tapping. She unfurled her wings and flapped them thematically. The group’s attention recaptured, she started tapping her talon on the barn again.

“Oh, uhh, she says hi, and… She’s been watching the Ta’vall’s movements, they just called some kind of meeting at their mansion. She says if you two want to get back to your family, now is the time to move.” Apreet translated the taps for Qualo as they came, which was a good thing because Ajna was tapping too quickly for Vindassa to understand more than a third of what she was saying.

“Well, thanks. Not sure where this support from your family was last week, though,” Qualo huffed a little. Vindassa put their hand on her shoulder but didn’t say anything. Her indignance was understandable, but now wasn’t the time to guilt people.

Ajna glanced over at Apreet, and the two shared a look before she started tapping again. “Yeah, she’s right, family politics are complicated. Laioq and Jai’ir have tried to push for more support, but the two of them don’t get along with— Wait, they did  _ what?”  _ Apreet cut himself off and stared wide-eyed at Ajna as she tapped agitatedly. “I can’t believe that. Maiike is probably furious. Yeah, of course she would.”

Qualo cleared her throat as she got left out of the conversation, but Apreet didn’t notice, he was listening to Ajna too intently.  _ “I don’t fully understand what they’re talking about, but it sounds like Korbrass broke some kind of… conservation agreement? I’m actually lost.”  _ Vindassa tried to fill her in, but they were only getting bits and pieces.

“Vin, you said you understood what she was saying,” She elbowed them in the ribs.

_ “She’s tapping extremely quickly. I don’t speak it that well,”  _ they admitted.

“...Okay, uhh,” Apreet cleared his throat and shook his head after Ajna finished whatever it was she was saying. “During the raid, Korbrass lit a bunch of bonfires instead of using self-sustaining Ta’vall flames. When I said the Shard’s ecosystem is broken, it’s because of stuff like– What? Yeah, I told them last night.” Ajna interrupted Apreet with some more tapping which he handwaved away. That stuff he’d told the two of them last night about the Shard’s ecosystem must be a well-kept family secret.

“Apreet, just give me the footnotes, I have no idea what you’re saying,” Qualo said.

“Rai is basically the head of the family, she’s been very opposed to supporting you, and has a lot of influence. After the stunt Korbrass just pulled, it sounds like maybe twenty of us are going to break ranks with her if she doesn’t come out with a good justification for Korbrass’ actions. That’s why we’re helping you. Well… I mean, I would have helped if I could have, I just might have gotten in trouble for it before today.”

“Uh-huh…” Qualo crossed her arms and gave Apreet a look. Vindassa considered scolding her for giving him such a hard time, but they weren’t sure if this was more flirting or not.

“No! Really, I would have…!” Ajna started tapping, again. The pejorative came fast, it was something to the effect of Apreet being… bridled? Apreet turned to look at her with a body language of pure exasperation. “Oh, screw you Ajna, I  _ like _ Qualo.”

“Did she just call me a slut?” Qualo leaned towards Vindassa and whispered the question to them.

_ “No comment,”  _ they replied _.  _ They were quite certain she hadn’t, but teasing Qualo was fun.

Apreet rolled his eyes and looked back at Qualo and Vindassa. “Ajna says she’s willing to scout ahead to help you two avoid Ta’vall patrols, if you want. 

Vindassa took a moment to consider the proposition, and then nodded as they projected a response into Ajna’s mind.  _ “We’d be appreciative of that, thank you Ajna.”  _ They then looked at Qualo, “ _ I told her yes. I think it’s a good idea.” _

Qualo looked at Vindassa, and then at Apreet for a moment. She clearly had issues with trusting Apreet and Ajna here, but as far as Vindassa saw it, they had little recourse. If their family was to gain allies, they’d not make any progress by slapping the first hand offered to them in good faith. Besides, if Ajna had wanted to lead the Ta’valls to them, she could probably have done so already.

“Alright, lead the way, I guess,” Qualo let go of her negging and gestured her compliance to the huge snowy white Toira perched on the barn.

“I’ve gotta stay here for a bit, I can’t just leave my post. Keep me in the loop, Ajna. If Maiike is finally growing a spine, I want to know.” Ajna squawked loudly and flapped her wings in response, and then took off. Apreet laughed as though he’d told a joke, and then turned to Qualo and Vindassa with a big grin on his face. “So, uhh, the typical protocol we use is that if Ajna flies counterclockwise, it’s clear to go, clockwise means to stay put.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Qualo nodded.

_ “I actually already knew that, but don’t tell him. Toira are very proud of their secret communication methods,”  _ Vindassa whispered to her. Qualo rolled her eys as though Vindassa had been showing off, rather than just sharing important information. They hadn’t been showing off, right?

The two of them followed Ajna to the bridge without not having to stop. They crossed, and Ajna landed dipped low, cruising on the complex wind currents that circulated the Shard. Vindassa looked up at her to tell her which bridge they’d be taking next. It was a bit tiresome, but Ajna didn’t need to know the full itinerary. They repeated the process nine times, travelling nearly all the way across the entire Shard. The journey took almost as many hours, the winding paths and occasional stops making it take nearly three times as long as it would have otherwise. At last, they arrived at a landmass near the ‘top’ of the Shard, a cold, long narrow rock covered in sand with only a few cacti growing on it. It was too far from the Ta’vall’s suns to receive much heat, and the Toira didn’t have much need for rock and sand. The Tukkiqa stopped by occasionally, but Vindassa wasn’t sure exactly why.

Suddenly, Ajna landed next to them, flapping wings kicking up a tiny storm of sand. She started to shift immediately, wings becoming arms, webbed feet becoming… unwebbed feet. Most humans thought the process was a little bit gruesome to watch, but they’d both seen it often enough that it was boring. Vindassa raised an eyebrow at the spectacle, and then looked at Qualo.

_ “Did you ask her to come down?”  _ They asked her.

“Yeah,” Qualo gave Vindassa a dismissive nod as Ajna finished taking her human form.

“Craaww… Erk. That was… a lot of flying.” Ajna spat onto the sand and straightened up. Qualo made no secret of staring at Ajna’s oversized tits, grinning like a child. Ajna returned the grin, but Vindassa couldn’t tell if it was a ‘stop staring at me’ grin or a ‘why aren’t you sucking on them?’ grin. Qualo did neither, even though she clearly saw the look. It occurred to Vindassa that Ajna’s breasts might not always be this big, the Toira shapeshifting allowed them to modify the proportions of their human bodies as easily as Vindasa could pierce one of their ears. Qualo knew the cup size of everybody in the Shard, so perhaps that was what she’d noticed.

“Why did you want me to come with you, anyway?” Ajna asked. She winked at Qualo, and made no attempt to cover up her nipplies which were rapidly hardening in the cold.

“I want to propose something to my family, and to you and yours. I think it’ll make sense if you’re there for the whole thing.” Qualo said, finally bringing herself to look Ajna in the eyes.

_ “What are you talking about, Qualo?”  _ Vindassa asked her.

“I’ll tell you in a second,” she waved at Vindassa dismissively. They frowned at that, but didn’t push her. “Let’s go inside first, I really want to make sure that Caiz and Tieralle are alright first.” The three of them proceeded across the sand pit until they found the door to their second hideout.

_   
_ A single metal tube emerged from the said. It was covered with a cap that attached to a small hinge. The device was strange-looking and easy to miss, few would see it and think ‘doorway to hidden lair,’ which was the point. As they walked up to it, Vindassa saw it didn’t have much sand accrued on the top, which almost certainly meant that Caiz and Tieralle were already inside. Qualo popped the lid off as Vindassa and Ajna brought up the rear. 

“Where are we going, again?” Ajna asked, looking around. She was probably looking for a door that actually  _ looked _ like a door.

“Down the pipe,” Qualo said, gesturing towards the metal tube that was barely wide enough for her to fit a finger inside.

“Uhh…” Ajna trailed off, giving her a confused look. Qualo snuck another look at her tits, which Ajna noticed, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Vin will take you with them. See you down there,” Qualo laughed, winking at Ajna in a way that  _ had  _ to be flirting. She used her Aspect to find the easy path through the shadowy tube, and slid through the darkness, vanishing instantly.

“You guys can really fit through that…?” Ajna said, her voice thick with disbelief.

_ “Us, and you too,”  _ Vindassa said to her, putting their arm around Ajna’s shoulders and finding their own path down the tube. As the two of them appeared, Ajna immediately fell to her knees, dry heaving. People’s first time shadow sliding was always a little disorienting.

“Hey! Warn me next time!” Qualo wheezed, and Vindassa looked over to see that Caiz had tackle-hugged Qualo against the wall of the cave. She laughed in spite of her harsh words, her eyes tearing as she kissed him on the top of his head.

“Qua-la, darling, is Vindassa with you?” Tieralle’s exhausted voice called from further within the room.   
  
“Yeah, they’re… oh, already here.” Qualo looked up and saw the two of them as she said it. Vindassa put a hand on Ajna’s shoulder to steady her, but she remained crouched on the ground, clutching her stomach.

_ “I’m here, my love,”  _ Vindassa projected the thought into Tieralle’s mind as they walked up to her.

“And I see you come with a guest. Ajna, isn’t it?” Tieralle asked, her eyes flickering to Ajna’s prone form for just a moment. Vindassa approached their beloved sister, and had to hold back a gasp. She looked absolutely ragged, her braid had strands loose all over, she had bruises on her legs and collarbone, and even now, she was still not breathing steadily. Even with Tieralle looking so frail, Vindassa couldn’t help but feel her strength and compassion. They knelt next to her, wrapping their arms around her shoulders and crying softly.

_ “Thank the Ancients you’re alright… are you okay, my love? Did they hurt you?” _

“Yeah, Ms.Taion. Umm… I don’t suppose you all have any lanterns? It’s so dark in here, I don’t think I could even shapeshift a set of eyes that could see in this.” Ajna asked loudly, unable to see any of the family’s emotional reunion.

“Of course, darling,” Tieralle called to Ajna, and then looked into Vindassa’s eyes. “I’ve weathered worse before, my sweet, and I shall weather worse yet.” she murmured softly.

Vindassa clutched her closely, feeling her ragged breathing, and did their best to be happy that she was alright, rather than furious at Korbrass for doing this to her. They were so occupied that they didn’t notice Qualo approach with Caiz in her arms, or to see Caiz leap out of her arms and tackle them in an equally enthusiastic hug.

“Daddy…!” Caiz whined into his chest. They spared one of their arms to hug Caiz closely as one of Tieralle’s numerous limbs fetched a small lamp and hung it on a hook in the ceiling. The lamp wasn’t big enough to fully illuminate the small cave, but it shed enough light for Ajna to see it.

Ajna stood up, her eyes shifting into huge, yellow ones with massive irises. Those were… Owl eyes? “I guess it’d be weird to expect you all to have anything brighter. This’ll do, though.”

Qualo lingered around the middle of the room, pacing and fidgeting, rather than join in the group hug. Vindassa glanced at her for a moment, wondering what it was she wanted to say.

“So, my dears, what did the two of you discover, and why is Ajna here?” Tieralle asked. Vindassa wondered how this woman, Vindassa’s, own shadow, could be so dark beneath such harsh, scouring light. 

_ “Go ahead and tell them,”  _ Vindassa said to Qualo. 

“We successfully made it to the impact site. There’s some kind of harpoon embedded in it. The harpoon appears to originate from  _ inside _ the pillar, which we think means it must have come from Terra. Taion’s magic was all over it, it was completely unmistakeable, the Ta’valls couldn’t have not noticed it,” Qualo told the tale, a distracted look in her eyes like she was preparing a statement.

“W-What?” Caiz took a moment away from embracing Vindassa’s abdomen. “Vin, did you…?”   
  
“No. We think it was a Taion Aspect from Terra. Clearly, they’re still around.” Qualo shook her head.

“Wow. Didn’t expect that one… and Kobrass has just been sitting on it? What’s their game? And why did you want me to come inside?” Ajna exhaled deeply, shaking her head.

“I asked you to come inside, Ajna, because I have an idea. I think Korbrass wants to slander us, they want to say that we tried to destroy the Shard once, and that we’ll do it again. We never officially talked this through, but our plan was always to deny the accusation, and wait for the lack of proof to vindicate us. Now, that’s not going to happen,” As she spoke, a hard, determined look entered Qualo’s eyes. She made a fist with one hand and squeezed it with the other.   
  
“And what do you think we should do now, Qua-la?” Tieralle asked quietly.

Qualo looked around the room. She met Vindassa’s eyes, and they nodded encouragingly even though they had no idea what she was going to say. If Qualo believed this was important, then it was worth hearing her out. They’d not chase away the confidence she was clearly struggling to hold on to, even if her idea ended up being utterly absurd. It wasn’t a thought the old Vindassa would have had.

“I think we should destroy the Shard.”


	4. Unmaking

“Caiz, that isn’t funny, Qualo’s trying to speak,” Tieralle broke the silence, her voice lacking its normal energy.

“What? I didn’t do anything!” Caiz protested.

“No, Tieralle, I said what you just heard. We should destroy the Shard,” Qualo planted her hands on her hips and gave Tieralle a serious look. She’d been thinking about it all day, it was the only course of action that made any sense to her anymore.

“Yes!” Ajna laughed and clapped her hands, the sound reverberating around the enclosed space. “That’s absolutely not what I expected, Qualo, but yes, please, I’m _ so sick _ of this glorified terrarium.”

“You two are going to have to explain your rationale a little better than that,” Tieralle said with a heavy sigh. She exchanged a purposeful look with Vindassa that probably contained some silent words.

“Vin, you told me that if that harpoon tears the Shard apart forcibly, it’ll probably kill all of us, right?” Qualo asked them.

_ “It’s all very speculative, Qualo, but yes, I don’t see a way that the Shard gets torn apart in a way that doesn’t involve a catastrophic re-entry to Terra, unless—” _

“Vin’s rambling, but they basically said yes.” Qualo didn’t wait the twenty minutes it would have taken for Vindassa to finish explaining. They frowned at her, but then rolled their eyes and gave a reluctant thumbs-up to the group to indicate that she wasn’t lying.

“How do we even know the harpoon  _ can  _ destroy the Shard? It’s been six months since the impact.” Caiz suggested. He rubbed his arm nervously, clearly not enjoying the direction that this conversation was going.

“We don’t. But If one of our asshole cousins sent that harpoon, I’ll bet my tits that they’ll send another. Maybe it’ll take them ten years, maybe ten weeks, maybe one’s already on its way and is gonna hit in the next few hours. Point is, the Shard isn’t safe, and this isn’t even taking into account Apreet’s story about how the Shard will be uninhabitable in fifty years.”

“Fifty? Is that what he told you?” Ajna laughed. “Apreet’s going by the generous estimates. By my estimate, we’ve got five. My siblings don’t like to admit that I know what I’m talking about, this kind of process is acceleratory, like gravity.” The four of them all gave Ajna a confused look, except for Qualo, who looked at her tits and smiled a little.

“Oh, whatever, it’s bad, trust me,” Ajna tried to roll her eyes, but the gesture didn’t quite translate properly on account of her shapeshifted features.

“A convincing argument, and a bold course of action, Qua-la. You’ll have my support,” Tieralle smiled at her. Qualo’s older sister was exhausted and battered, but her smile still had the power to make the shadows in Qualo’s heart deepen. Taion’s Breath, she loved her so much. She grinned back at Tieralle broadly, bouncing on the balls of her feet a little.

“I’ll talk to Maiike, but I think she’ll be on-board, and she’ll bring others with her. Even if she doesn’t, I’m with you.” Ajna nodded her assent.

_ “Repeat for me, please?”  _ Vindassa asked in Qualo’s head. She nodded to them.

“The ritual for creating the Shard required a member from all four of the families, that’s why Korbrass needed me,” Qualo repeated after the voice Vindassa projected into her head. “To take it down, we’ll need a ritualist from each family again. I can do my part, and I could train the Ta’vall, Toira, and Tukkiqa ritualists if we had the time. This is delicate work, however, I’d much prefer we find Aspects who have a fairly deep understanding of the abstract application of magic, not just the practical. Safely dismantling a pocket dimension isn’t a job for an amateur who took a week-long course.”

“So, we can find someone from the Toira family fairly easily, right Ajna?” Qualo asked, looking over at Ajna. Ajna raised an eyebrow at that, not realizing that Vindassa had stopped speaking and that now it was Qualo. The rest of the family had known Vindassa long enough to recognize the difference

“Oh! Uhh… don’t ask me, I don’t know anything about any of that occult stuff,” she finally replied with a shrug.

“Rai was the Toira who performed the initial ritual with us, but I know Laioq could take her place,” Vindassa again spoke to Qualo and she repeated it for the group.

Ajna snorted at that. “Well, good luck convincing Laioq. She’s not a fan of Korbrass’ ever since they broke up, but she’s always been staunch about doing everything we can to preserve the Shard.” She glanced over at Vindassa, and then snort-laughed again, and raised her hands in defeat as they said something to her.

“I still have friends amongst the Tukkiqa, though I confess I’ve never asked them about their experience with ritual magic,” Tieralle added. “I’ll write some letters, if you wouldn’t mind delivering them, darling?” She looked over at Vindassa with a smile.

“...Wait, does that mean I’m the one who has to convince a Ta’vall to go along with this plan?” Qualo asked, crossing her arms.

_ “You might be the only one who can. Did you not have sex with most of them at one point?”  _ Vindassa asked her.

“Well, yeah, I did, but they’re all bootlickers. None of them will break ranks with… Well… maybe Rita? We did kind of just bludgeon her, though, that won’t be a great ice breaker.” Qualo sighed. Caiz cackled as though Qualo had told a joke, and she frowned at him.

“What? Ice-Breaker? You bonked her on the head? Ta’vall Aspects make ice?” He laughed at her.

“Oh. Oh. You’re awful,” she rolled her eyes at him, and Tieralle sighed too.

_ “Anyway. That could be a problem, yes. I did the ritual initially with Korbrass, but I know that Toz and Orobin know how to perform it too. I suspect that all three would sooner perish than help us in this particular endeavor.”  _ Vindassa’s voice in Qualo’s head was a bit fuzzy; they were distracted.

“Surely it can’t just be those three? It’s not like the Ta’valls do all that much work around the Shard, surely a few of them pissed away some of the last century learning how to do weird occult shit. There’s literally a room in the Ta’vall mansion that’s packed with books all written by Korbrass. Nobody can write about themselves that much, one of them must be on magic rituals” Qualo said.

“...Do they really?” Tieralle asked, raising an amused eyebrow.

“Oh yeah, and it’s every bit as gaudy and pretentious as you’d imagine. I went over to have sex with Baola one time and he showed me the inside. It’s so hideous, there’s this bust of Korbrass on one of the shelves,” Qualo laughed as she remembered it, and the story got a warm chuckle out of Ajna. Qualo gave her a look and smiled, and she got a smile back that definitely meant Ajna was interested in her. Nice.

_ “It’s possible that there are other Ta’valls who’d have the skills we’d require, but gathering that information will be a perilous task in and of itself. If you’ll recall, we’re not exactly on speaking terms right now,”  _ Vindassa shook their head, and then yawned. It had been a long hike to get here.

“Yeah, I’m tired too. We have food here, right? I’m about ready to wind down and get some sleep. It sounds like we’ve got a good starting point to get to work on in the morning. Ajna’s welcome to stay, right guys?” Qualo gave Ajna a very deliberate look and winked at her.

“Qualo, your whole family can see you flirting, have some shame, girl,” in spite of her scolding tone, Ajna giggled at her and returned the smile.

“They don’t mind, there’s no prudes in this family,” Qualo slowly walked over and took Ajna’s hand in hers. “Can I kiss you?” she asked.

“Qua-la, darling,” Tieralle spoke with a very deliberate tone. Caiz cackled, he was more familiar with the ‘you’re in trouble’ voice than she was.

“What? Aw, c’mon Mistress, Vin already punished me” Qualo looked away from Ajna and pouted at Tieralle. Was she really going to cock-block her? The agreement she had with Vindassa and Tieralle about cumming only applied when she was with them. It had felt a little spurious of Vindassa to enforce it during the three-way with Apreet in the first place, but now Tieralle was just being mean.

“Oh, I know what Vin did, and it’s certainly a good start,” Tieralle replied smoothly. Clearly the two had exchanged silent words.

“Ooh, is this a BDSM thing? Is Qualo in trouble? Can I join in? I’d love to help.” Ajna asked excitedly. Fuck. If the agreement hadn’t applied before, it totally applied now.

“Hey! Ajna!” Qualo scowled at her, but all three of them were ignoring her.

“Why, I think that sounds like an excellent idea. Don’t you agree, my love?” Tieralle said with a quietly sinister laugh.

***

Korbrass sat down at their desk with the weight of failure hanging heavy on their shoulders. Their long, feathered hair spread across the fine oak, fanning out in a circle. Today had been a disaster, the raid itself had attracted much more attention than they’d wanted, Vindassa, the real prize, hadn’t even been there, and the little one and Tieralle had escaped. Korbrass had the utmost respect for all of the Taions except the loud mouth. They’d never have thought that the little one or Tieralle were helpless, but they’d both far exceeded Korbrass’ estimation of them. Unfortunately, the Ta’vall family failing to capture a crippled old woman and shrimp with a hormone condition painted a miserable picture, even if they’d both been extremely impressive today.

“Kor,” Yukoi burst through the door unbidden and unannounced. Korbrass raised their head up, peering at Yukoi through the long veil of their bangs. A few months ago, Tieralle would have cut their hair for them, but that bridge had been thoroughly burned to the ground, now. They really needed to see someone else about it. They were starting to get a haggard war-commander sort of aesthetic going, and it was completely dreadful.

“What is it?” Kobrass asked bitterly.

“Found out where Vindassa and Qualo were. You’re not gonna like it.” Yukoi was a lean but muscular woman with a posture that was supernatural in how consistently relaxed it was. She had her dark hair perpetually tied up in a short ponytail. Korbrass, being a consummate diva, hated the minimalistic look. They’d rarely made the disapproval known, as it wasn’t really any of their business what Yukoi did with her own body. Today though, their foul mood manifested itself in a scornful glance at the offending hairstyle.

“Do not tell me that—”   
  
“Impact site. They bashed Rita and Ukra’s skulls in. They definitely saw the harpoon,” Yukoi gave them the answer that they’d both dreaded, and would have been surprised if it was anything different.   
  
“...Are Rita and Ukra alright?” Kobrass asked impatiently with a palm raised towards the ceiling when Yukoi let the silence hang without filling in the obvious detail. Korbrass doubted that Yukoi was aware of how the phrase ‘bashed their skulls in’ sounded. Yukoi had single-handedly created all three of the artificial suns that lit and heated the Shard with her impeccable control over Ta’vall’s fire, but she was miserable with words.

“Yeah, they’re fine. Toz thinks that Vindassa drugged them; they were a little doped up,” Yukoi took a seat in one of Korbrass’ chairs and kicked her feet up onto their desk. Korbrass used their Aspect to summon a current of electricity. Tiny forks of lightning danced off their fingertips and struck Yukoi in the ankle. The bite of electricity made Yukoi flinch and withdraw her feet.

“No shoes on the desk,” Korbrass hissed. Yukoi nodded and started unlacing her heavy boots without complaint, apparently not realizing that she could just sit like a normal person.

“I debriefed them. Ukra hit Vindassa with some lightning but it sounds like Rita dropped the ball and went down without throwing a punch. Pretty slick timing on their part, hitting the impact site with only two guards” Yukoi said, prying one of her boots off and working on the next.

“Do you think there’s a leak we need to be concerned about?” Korbrass asked.

“If there was, they would have abandoned the hideout before we got there. No worries on that front.” Yukoi pried her second boot free, and then replanted her feet on Korbrass’ desk. They resisted the urge to shock Yukoi again - they didn’t want her feet on their desk, boots or no boots, really. They should probably have specified that. Korbrass drummed their nails on the desk for several minutes, lost deep in thought. Yukoi waited without the slightest sign of impatience.

“Alright, we need to make an announcement. We need to tell the other families that we have just confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that the Taions are responsible for the damage to the Shard - which is not irrevocable, so long as we can stop them from acting again. We need to make it clear that we are not going to take a kindly view towards collaboration with the Taions. I’m going to talk to Rai, you go talk to Torstial.

“Oh, right, about that. Toiras are pissed about the bonfires we set to try and fence the Taions in. It was way over the quotas they set for wood burning.” Yukoi commented absently.

“Did any of them specifically say something about it?” Korbrass asked, again forced to drag the relevant details out of Yukoi. Ta’vall’s burning heart, but the woman was frustrating sometimes.

  
“Yeah, Laioq and Maiike both wrote you letters. I also spotted a big ol’ albatross flying around the Shard, watching the entire raid,” Yukoi reached into her fanny pack and pulled out two slightly crumpled letters, tossing them onto Korbrass’ desk.

“Why didn’t you say anything at the time?” Korbrass demanded, snatching the letters up and giving them the briefest of glances. They were both signed, one by Laioq and one by Maiike. Neither of them were really in charge of the Toira family, but they could cause problems if they wanted, and Korbrass didn’t want problems right now. They had strong suspicions that Laioq in particular was collaborating with the Taions, she’d turned into a real spiteful bitch after she and Korbrass had broken up fifty years ago.

  
“We were on-mission; it wasn’t important at the time,” Yukoi commented idly, picking something out of her nails.

“How could it not be important? That Toira could have been spotting for them, telling them our every move, telling them exactly what bridge to take. Bleeding Ancients, Yukoi!” Korbrass cursed and straightened up in their chair to glare at Yukoi properly.

“Nah, the Toira was way out of range of the Taion Aspect, they were keeping their distance, whoever they were,” Yukoi shrugged.

“Yukoi, the Toira invent languages and secret communication methods all the time. For all we know, that Toira could have been reciting complex poetry by flying in specific patterns or flapping its wings the right way,” Korbrass did their best to be as stern as possible but Yukoi had a way of just apathetically shrugging off even the most intense of hostility like it was nothing.

“Hmm. I dunno Kor, seems pretty far-fetched. I think the Taions just got away and you don’t like it.” Yukoi formed a sharp little shard of ice between her fingers with her Aspect and then started using it to trim her nails.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Yukoi, don’t be so disgusting,” with a growl, Korbrass opened a desk drawer and tossed one of the pairs of nail clippers inside at Yukoi. She caught it, melted the ice shard, and started using the clippers instead without missing a beat.

“I can’t believe that everybody managed to fuck this operation up so badly,” Korbrass grumbled, glaring at Yukoi with crossed arms.

“No, Kor. Everybody did their job today, the Taions probably spent decades preparing that hideout, it’s no surprise they slipped away. Only one person messed up today, and it was you.” Yukoi’s voice was stern, but not accusatory as she started clipping her nails. Yukoi always spoke her mind as calmly and steadily as if she was reading a passage from a book.

Korbrass’ eye twitched in barely-contained rage. They watched as one of Yukoi’s nail clippings fell to the surface of the desk, and they dug their own nails into the flesh of their thighs. “What the fuck did you just say to me, Yukoi?” Kobrass asked coldly.

“Little Taion was right. If we’d brought even a single Tukkiqa Aspect with us, they could have levitated that boulder out of the way in an instant and we’d have had them. It was a mistake not to ask for help.” Yukoi wasn’t phased at all; she was the only one in the family willing to stand up to them. It was frustrating, but Korbrass valued her input nonetheless. 

The two of them stared at one another for several long seconds, Korbrass’ anger coming in waves, anger at Yukoi, at themselves, and at Vindassa. Fuck Vindassa, that contemptible prick. “Alright, Yukoi. When you talk to Torstial, I want you to make it clear that the Ta’vall family is not going to tolerate collaboration with the Taions. This is about the safety of our homes, about our lives, not petty politics. I want the Tukkiqa on-board with this hunt for the Taions. I want those assholes in chains before they can destroy our home. Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Yukoi nodded amenably, immune to Korbrass’ anger. “Did you want to talk to Rita and Ukra yourself? They’re downstairs right now.”

“...Actually, I have a better idea. Ukra hit Vindassa with lightning, but Rita’s the one who just totally fucked up?” Korbrass drummed their nails on the desk, a wicked idea forming in their mind. Maybe there was a way to have some fun with this whole shitstorm before they had to go back to war against the Taions.

“Well, hard to place blame exactly, but it sounded like Rita just went down without a fight. Neither said anything but I think they were probably playing frost catch,” Yukoi nodded. Of course they’d be playing frost catch, that idiotic game where you caught a snowball without your hands.

“Alright then. What do you say to helping me teach Rita a lesson?” Korbrass asked, standing up and walking around their desk.

“Rita’s not military, hard to expect militar dis— Oh. Ooooh! You mean a sex thing?” Yukoi asked, putting the nail clippers down.

Korbrass heaved the heaviest sigh they could heave, and walked past Yukoi into the hallway. “I sure as fuck don’t plan on giving her an informative lecture,” they muttered as Yukoi scooped up her nails clippings and joined them.

“Rita!” Korbrass yelled loudly as they entered the main foyer. Rita and Ukra bolted up to their feet, standing at attention. Rita was a tall, slightly heavy set woman with curly red hair down to her shoulders and soft features that were just ever so slightly plain-looking. Ukra stood by her side, trying to show some solidarity with her. Korbrass was pretty sure the two were a couple, or at least having casual sex. There was only so much secrecy to be had from one’s family members who lived in the same house.

Kobrass descended the stairs with slow, deliberate purpose, their heels clicking on the stairs. Several other members of the family started subtly inching their way towards the doors that let out of the foyer, trying to find somewhere else to be. “Oh, no, please, everybody, stay. Don’t leave on my account. If I wanted privacy then I have a perfectly good bedroom I could do this in.”

The nervous tension hung heavy in the air as Korbrass reached the bottom of the stars and stood in the middle of the main foyer into their house. They looked Rita in the eyes and with as much cruel animosity as they could muster, beckoned her closer with a single finger. She and Ukra shared a glance with one another, and then, she nervously stepped forward. She was about half a head taller than Korbrass, but she shrank beneath their gaze like a scolded child.

“K-Kor… do you mind if I go to the bathroom before we—” Korbrass spat in Rita’s face, the gob of saliva striking her right in the eye. She yelped in surprise, squeezing her eye shut and staring at Korbrass in disbelief with her other.

“Get on your fucking knees, Rita,” Korbrass hissed.

  
“L-Look… I’m sor—” Korbrass slapped Rita hard. She yelped in distress and Korbrass used the moment of weakness to place their hand on Rita’s shoulder and push her down to her knees. Korbrass used their Aspect, creating a ring of ice that crept up and over Rita’s knees, legs, and feet, freezing her to the floor. Korbrass grabbed Rita by the wrists and forced them above her head, freezing them together. They formed a pillar ice that curved in a half-circle down towards the floor, connecting it to the ice around her legs. Korbrass took a step back to admire their work. They were quite proud of their Aspect-formed ice sculptures, and seeing how this impromptu one both immobilized Rita and put her on display for the rest of the family was quite pleasing. They’d never utilize their Aspect in this way against a human, prolonged exposure to such cold was enough to cause hypothermia or frostbite, but the Ta’valls blessing granted them a degree of resistance to extreme temperatures. Normally, that was advantageous to the Aspect, but right now, it was advantageous to Korbrass specifically.

“You  _ fucked up,  _ Rita.” Korbrass started to pace in circles around her. They formed small, razor-sharp shards of ice and flung them with precision, slicing holes in Rita’s clothes. Korbrass’ aim was pretty good, most of them didn’t graze Rita or draw blood as they shredded sleeves and tore holes in her pant legs.

“K-Kor… come on…” Rita yelped as she was grazed by the razor-sharp ice and shivered in cold, trying to remain as still as she could in her bondage. Rita may have been resistant to the chill of Korbrass’ ice, but she wasn’t immune to it. The chill would be uncomfortable, which served Korbrass’ intentions just fine.

“Come on, what?” Korbrass snapped, quickly forming a dagger-sized shard of ice that was just as sharp as a steel one. They placed the tip of it under Rita’s chin as they walked around to her front.

“Come on, see reason?” Korbrass traced the tip of their frozen knife down the line of Rita’s throat as she trembled.

“Come on, give me a break?” With two swift motions, they sliced off sections of Rita’s blouse, exposing her left breast to the room as the tattered cloth fell to the ground. Rita had heavy, D-cup breasts that sagged just a little with large, dark areola. She’d elected not to wear a bra today. Lucky her, that meant Korbrass didn’t have to cut it to shreds.

“Come on, forgive me for being such a _ fuckup? _ ” Korbrass laid the flat of their blade against Rita’s exposed breast and slowly dragged it across her nipple until it was rock hard and Rita was whimpering in a combination of arousal, fear, and cold.

“T-Third… one…” Rita whined, averting her gaze. It was hard to tell if she was trembling or shivering at this point, but Korbrass didn’t care to puzzle out the truth.

“Don’t you fucking look away from me,” Korbrass used their other hand to conjure electricity, and directed it to dance across Rita’s stomach. Rita shrieked in pain and tried to double over at the relatively harmless, but extremely painful high-voltage shock. She started sobbing, and looked up at Korbrass with tear-filled eyes.

“I’m S-Sor—” Korbrass spat in her mouth as she tried to talk, and Rita coughed and choked on it. A combination of Korbrass’ and Rita’s saliva dribbled down the woman’s chin as she retched gently.

“You’re sorry, huh? Well, thank Ta’vall for that. What should I do with this glorious bounty of your worthless regrets, Rita?” Korbrass sliced off more of Rita’s blouse, exposing her other breast, and then directed another electrical current at it. Rita screamed again, sobbing and crying uncontrollably. Yukoi stepped up, placing one hand on the ice sculpture that was keeping Rita immobilized, and nodded at Korbrass. A tiny frigid breeze blew through the room as Yukoi kept the ice from melting with her Aspect, and Korbrass returned the gesture. It wouldn’t do to have Rita’s bondage melting before they were done having their fun.

“Ukra, does Rita prefer it in the ass, or the cunt?” Korbrass looked over at Ukra, who was watching the scene unfold with painful apprehension.

“W-What?” he asked, jumping in fright.

“You two are fucking, right? Does Rita like anal?” Korbrass demanded harshly, eyes boring into him. Ukra got the message - he wasn’t in Rita’s position right now, but he wasn’t in Korbrass’ good graces either.

“Umm… N-not that I know of?” he answered nervously.

“U-Ukra…Ugh!” Korbrass slapped Rita again as she looked over at Ukra and tried to talk.

“Shut up. Your attention is on me right now, do you understand, _you dumb_ _fuckup?_ ” Korbrass put the dagger back to Rita’s throat, the ice making her shiver and the sharp blade making her tremble.

“Y-Yes…” She murmured, sniffling as her nose started to run.

Korbrass removed the blade from her throat and walked around Rita, their heels clicking on the floor ominously. With a single, precise swing, they used the razor-sharp ice to slice the ass of her pants open without destroying the waistband. They tore the hole open wider with their hand, and then grabbed Rita’s panties and sliced the ass of those open too. They handed the blade to Yukoi for a moment, and then started forming a new frozen shape in their hands. They formed a smooth, round bulb, and then a narrower stem and wide, flat base. The butt-plug they formed was about two inches thick, which wasn’t huge, but if Rita was an anal novice, it’d be plenty big. They took a few moments to smooth out the rough parts of the ice so that it could go inside Rita’s body without cutting or scratching her.

“Kor, that’s way too bi—”

“Shut the  _ fuck _ up, Ukra!” Korbrass snapped angrily at him as he tried to intervene on Rita’s behalf. They grabbed Rita by the back of the neck with their free hand and applied subtle pressure to her windpipe with their fingers.

“W-What’s A-Aah!” Rita yelped in distress. Korbrass shoved the frozen butt plug between her cheeks and started to twist and wriggle it around until she felt Rita’s asshole start to accept it.

“It… it hurts… owww!” Rita wailed. Korbrass used their Aspect to slowly sap some of the heat out of Rita’s throat, and she gasped and coughed as she struggled to breathe. She also stopped complaining.

“Ukra, did it hurt when the Taions clubbed you?” Korbrass asked as they applied steady pressure to the plug. It sank in a few inches and they felt Rita’s feeble attempts to cry and wail against their fingertips.

“Well…” Ukra muttered nervously. Korbrass could see him struggling, he didn’t want to give them any ammunition to use against Rita, but he knew that he had no choice. A lie would be pitifully obvious, and he was smarter than that, or so Korbrass hoped. “...Yeah.” 

“It hurt, huh?” Korbrass asked, relaxing their assault on Rita’s throat as they pushed the plug in harder. Rita summoned her sapped strength and screamed in pain as the plug went past its widest part and settled in her ass. She started sobbing, blubbering and crying some more as Korbrass took their hand away from her throat. They took the knife back from Yukoi and started circling Rita again, drawing a line across her flesh with the tip of the blade. They applied just enough pressure with the blade to scratch her, but not enough to break skin.

“The two of you weren’t paying attention, were you? Orobin was unconscious and you couldn’t be  _ fucking _ bothered to stand watch for eight measly hours.” Korbrass asked, grabbing Rita’s face roughly, their long fingernails digging into her cheeks as they lifted her face up.

“No…” Rita mumbled through tears and pinched face.

Korbrass glanced down for a second as they lifted a foot and brought it up against Rita’s crotch. “Frost catch?” they asked, foot poised. It didn’t matter  _ why _ they hadn’t been paying attention, but if they’d been playing that stupid game, then Korbrass wanted to hear it from her.

“Yu–Uuugh!” Korbrass kicked Rita in the cunt, and then slapped her again. Rita went limp in her bonds and started whimpering and trying to mumble something.

“What’s that, Rita? Speak up!” Korbrass said, grabbing a handful of Rita’s hair.

“Can’t… hold…” she whined.

Korbrass raised an eyebrow, not sure what Rita was trying to say, until they saw the rapidly growing wet spot in the front of her pants. They backed up a step and laughed as Rita pissed herself. “Ta’vall’s burning heart. You’re such a disgrace, Rita.”

On a whim, they brought the knife back up to Rita’s cheek, tapping her on the face with it. When Rita tried to look back at at Korbrass, they swung the knife upwards, shearing off the section of her hair that they were holding onto. They flung the handful of loose hair into Rita’s face, and she sobbed again, bits of hair sticking to the slobber and mucus running down her face. They walked around behind her, tip of her knife scratching Rita as they traced her jawline around to the back of her neck. There was another wet spot in the back of Rita’s pants from where the butt plug had partially melted and dripped out. Korbrass grabbed the plug, and pulled. Rita wailed in pain as the thick part of the plug stretched her ass wide again. It came free with a pop, somewhat melted and deformed from the heat of her body but still mostly intact. Korbrass dropped the knife, letting it clatter to the ground, and grabbed one of Rita’s nipples as they circled back around to the front.

Rita looked up at them sniffling and defeated as a cruel smile spread across Korbrass’ face. They pressed the tip of the buttplug to Rita’s lips, and she squeezed her mouth shut, shaking her head and murmuring an ‘uh-uh’ over and over as she cried. Korbrass squeezed Rita’s nipple and then twisted. She screamed and tried to keep her mouth shut at the same time, shaking her head and writhing in her bonds. Kobrass dug their nails in, squeezed harder, and twisted with all their strength.

“F-Fuc—” Rita cursed, and Korbrass shoved the ice into her mouth in the moment. They re-froze the half-melted butt plug and spread the ice across Rita’s cheeks and around the back of her head to form a gag to keep it in place. Rita mumbled something into her gag and looked at Korbrass with tear-stained eyes. Korbrass placed a hand on Rita’s face and slapped her twice, gently this time.

“Next time, Rita, you do the job I fucking assign to you, do you understand?” Korbrass whispered to her. Rita nodded slowly, thoroughly defeated and broken.

“Alright then. Rita stays here for two hours, Ukra, you’re going to make sure the ice doesn’t melt before then unless there’s an emergency. I know she’s a Godsdamned disgusting mess right now, but if anybody wants to fuck her in the ass, go right ahead. In fact, I’m going to strongly encourage it.” Korbrass spat in her face again and then walked around her and headed for the door. “Yukoi, I believe you’re on your way to have a chat, aren’t you?”

“Sure am, Kor. Tomorrow we’re going hunting for the Taions again, everybody, don’t tire yourself out on Rita too much, okay?” Yukoi turned and address their assembled family members. There’d been about seven of them when Korbrass had started, but another two had joined to watch the scene unfold.

As Korbrass and Yukoi left the mansion, the sound of Rita whining and struggling was clearly audible as a line formed behind her.

***

Of the one hundred and six Aspects living on the Shard, there were four Taions, eighteen Ta’valls, twenty four Tukkiqa, and sixty Toira. In spite of their numbers, the Toira’s main home was much smaller than the opulent manor that most of the Ta’valls lived in. It was also, on average, smaller than the bizarre, surreal tower-like structure that the Tukkiqa were constantly remodeling in an endeavor that was half artistic and half architectural experimentation.

The Toira ‘mansion’ was small because only a few Toira Aspects actually lived there full-time. The building was more of a series of aquariums, gardens, and various controlled environments where they cultivated various strains of flora and fauna. Most animals struggled in the Shard, birds in particular got confused and couldn’t fly properly. Anything that typically migrated couldn’t, and many animals just… fell off the landmasses and drifted until they either died or were rescued. Rescuing floating animals was something Ajna actually did quite a bit of.

The two people Ajna wanted to see today, Maiike and Rai, both lived in the Toira manor full-time. Rai coordinated food production and distribution, and was just an all-round shot-caller and influential voice for the family. Maiike was in charge of ecosystem and conservation oversight. The two both had offices which coordinated with the family’s work all across the Shard. Ajna had always thought it strange that a project such as preserving the natural balance required such a clerical, human,  _ unnatural  _ structure in order to actually work. Such was the nature of the Shard.

Ajna landed on a rock just outside the compound, and a very pregnant-looking cow raised its head up from grazing to peer at her as she started to reorganize her body into a human shape. The cow clopped its hoof on the ground, spelling out his name in Gur-Rai-San - Iosefa.

“Hey, Iosefa, how’s the pregnancy going?” Ajna croaked out as her head, neck, and face emerged from the amorphous flesh. She continued, forming her torso, and about half of her legs, but left the albatross feet and wings. She lazily left about half of the albatross feathers in-place instead of forming a proper head of hair. She had more flying to do today, and over-using her Aspect for trivial details like hair seemed like a waste of her time and energy. Half-avian forms like this were commonly called ‘harpies’ by humans, but it wasn’t very popular amongst Toira aspects compared to other animal-human hybrids. Even for the Toira, taking the form of a bird and flying was tricky, and typically required years of practice to get it right even on Terra where flying was easy. Mixing those avian features with very un-aerodynamic human features and then actually achieving flight was another level of difficulty. Ajna thought that the harpy form was really cool though, so she put in the practice to make it work.

Iosefa clopped out a ‘good’ in Gur-rai-san, and then went back to grazing. The family often used their own shapeshifted bodies to keep animal populations afloat. Iosefa’s calf was going to replace one they’d lost last year.

Ajna hopped off her rock and went inside. She made straight for one of the many closets there and opened the door with her teeth. She dug through the various generic garments and picked out a tube top and a loincloth. Most of her family were often in various states of shapeshift, so they had plenty of garments that easily fit a variety of shapes without much use of opposable thumbs. Ajna wriggled into the clothes, and headed for Maiike’s living quarters, which doubled as her office.

The door was shut when she got there, which, in Ajna’s experience, meant that Maiike was masturbating. Ajna folded her wings up and leaned against the wall next to the door. She could wait six minutes or so to minimize the chance that she interrupted her. It’d be harder to convince her to form an alliance with the Taions if she was horny and frustrated. Plus, Ajna just didn’t want to blue ball people in general. It was rude. It didn’t take long for Ajna to hear a growl and a muffled moan of some kind which sounded like Maiike might have just cum. The sounds were very intermittent and quiet, and after a few minutes, they stopped entirely. Ajna waited as long as she thought she had time for, and then turned and tapped her name on the door in Gur-rai-san using one of her feet.

“H-Hold on!” Maiike yelled, sounding flustered. That was a bit odd. Did she have someone else in there with her? Maiike regularly had sex with a few of their family members that Ajna was aware of, but she did it semi-publically like all the rest of them. The complex web of intra-family sex and partnerships and who was public and who was private was dizzying in its scope. Ajna wasn’t enough of a gossip to have a good grasp on the structure of it. Maybe Maiike was hooking up with someone new, or maybe she was just really horny today and having a jerk-off marathon.

As Ajna speculated about the details of her sex life, Maiike opened the door, doing her best to appear as though she hadn’t just been having sex, and not doing a very good job of it. “What is it, Ajna?” she asked frigidly.

“I just met with the Taions. They had an  _ interesting _ proposal for me, and for you,” She rapped the letter ‘U’ on the doorframe with a foot in Gur-Rai-San. The U was for unmaking the Shard, a subtle way for them to communicate exactly what they meant with less risk of being overheard. The ‘Unmake the Shard’ sentiment was still broadly unpopular amongst the Toira family, and would be considered outright iconoclastic amongst the Ta’vall or Tukkiqa families.

Maiike sighed, looked both ways across the hallway, and then ran a hand through her dark, curly hair. “Fine, come on inside, let’s hear it.”

Ajna followed Maiike into her study, which, despite the open window, absolutely  _ reeked  _ of sex. Ajna sniffed at it a few times, trying to place the scent - it didn’t smell especially human to her. What had Maiike been doing in here? Maiike closed the window and sat down at her desk, trying to look composed and leader-like. Ajna spotted her glancing nervously at the closet.

“So, what did the Taions have to say?” Maiike asked.

Ajna recounted the events of the previous day, skipping the details about her spying on the Ta’vall raid, as they were details which she’d already reported to Maiike directly. Maiike was surprised, but not shocked when Ajna told her about the harpoon from Terra, and Qualo’s proposition. Ajna decided to test her a little, and told her a little of the details of the sex she’d had with the Taions, and surely enough, the story got Maiike to glance at the closet door again.

With the window closed, the smell of whomever Maiike had been having sex with lingered in the air. Ajna subtly adjusted her olfactory senses to get a better read on it and suddenly she remembered something. It was vaguely... canine? If so, that meant that Maiike had probably been partially shifted as a wolf. Did that mean she was having sex with…  _ him?  _ She wouldn’t. She’d promised the family.

“That’s quite a plan. Certainly can’t say that cunt Qualo thinks small,” Maiike said blithely. She shook her head and heaved a dismissive sigh. Did Maiike and Qualo have bad blood between them? She couldn’t remember.

“Sure, but why the attitude, Maiike? This is a big break, we’ve only ever had one impossible goal - build consensus. We can’t even build consensus about what kind of pie to bake for Toira’s Day.” Ajna returned the attitude right back at her; Maiike wasn’t her boss, or commander, or anything like it. The Toira were supposed to be explicitly against hierarchy. It struck Ajna as at least a little hypocritical, since most of them listened to Korbrass like they were the Shard’s Monarch. 

“Right, so now all we have to do is overwhelm the Ta’valls’ guards and occupy the impact site for an hour while we perform a complex, reality-altering ritual. Very simple. This is all assuming we can trust Vindassa, of course.” Maiike shook her head, and snuck another surreptitious glance at her closet. Ajna’s suspicious irritation spiked at that. She was convinced that Maiike hadn’t been masturbating and that she was concealing her lover in that closet. Ajna was also becoming more and more certain who that lover was.

“Well, decide to trust them or not, and do it quickly. I’m going to go yell at Rai over Korbrass’ blatant violation of the conservation agreement,” Ajna stood up, and subtly worked her Aspect, adjusting her leg muscles for a quick, explosive burst of speed without making them look too much different externally. It was a tricky adjustment, but she was pretty sure that Maiike didn’t notice. 

“Fine, just be careful what you say to her,” Maiike narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Shit. She  _ had _ noticed. Maiike slowly placed her hand on the table, fingers extending and twisting into talons. The two shared a moment of eye contact. Maiike’s eyes flickered towards the closet again, and Ajna spread her wings.

She flapped her wings with as much force as she could muster, the move sending her backwards and buffeting Maiike with a burst of wind. She kicked the door, and the recoil against the frame made the door swing open. Maiike reached her a moment later, and slammed her talons into the wood, trying to force the door closed. Ajna wedged herself inside and kept the door open with her body, hardening her frame against the impact. The subtle application of her Aspect was almost entirely reflexive at this point, and the door bounced harmlessly off her.

“Toira’s fangs, Ajna!” Maiike hissed angrily, but only because she’d been caught.

“Raven, I can see you in there, come on out,” Ajna called, pushing the door back open and stepping away. Maiike scowled at her and with a powerful yank, removed her claws from her own closet door. 

“Come on out, then, Raven.” Maiike grumbled bitterly as the closet door slowly swung open.

A slender, pretty boy with long dark hair and no shirt slowly emerged from the depths of Maiike’s closet. “Hi, Ajna,” he said quietly, looking very intently at the floor.

“You said you were going to stop seeing him,” Ajna extended her wing in Raven’s direction to silence him as she glared at Maiike.

“Raven has apologized over and—”

“We  _ said _ you could keep seeing him if you didn’t let him into the house again, Maiike! That’s not what you told us you were going to do, you told us you wouldn’t see him anymore!” Ajna hissed, flapping her wings angrily.

“A-Ajna, I’m—” Raven tried to cut in.

“That was ten years ago, it was a bullshit ultimatum and you know it.” Maiike shot back, the two of them completely ignoring the timid twink who’d just emerged from the closet.

Ajna folded her wings at her side, gave Raven a glance, and then looked back at Maiike. “I had a pair of panties go missing this week, Maiike. I didn’t think anything of it, I lose things sometimes, and I thought that Raven was banned from the house.”

There was a long, cloying silence between the two women, and then, with perfect synchronization, they both looked at Raven. The colour drained out of his face and his eyes went wide. He clearly realized there was no use in denying it.

“Raven,” Maiike said, her voice frozen over with prejudice.

“I…” Raven’s voice warbled. He trembled a little, biting his lip.

“Raven, you promised me you wouldn’t,” Maiike said.

“I…” Raven backed up a step, still completely tongue tied.

“Where are my panties, you perverted little creep,” Ajna snapped at him.

“ _ I know how to perform that ritual!! _ ” Raven blurted out loudly, his voice so shrill it was almost a shriek.

There was a long silence as the three of them all stared at one another. Ajna spread her wings a little to make herself look bigger, and Raven flinched as though she was brandishing a blade at him. “Raven Tukkiqa, if you are lying to us, then I’m going to—”

“I’m not! I know how the ritual works! I’ll do it for you, I swear!” Raven wailed, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his hands with his face. The timid boy backed up into the wall as though he were trying to melt through it, his voice getting squeakier and more unhinged with every word.

“Ajna, that’s enough.” Maiike put her hand on Ajna’s feathered shoulder. “Raven’s just agreed to side with us against both Rai and Korbrass, and to help us unmake the Shard. Surely that earns him a little bit of lee-way.” She reached over with her other hand and grabbed Raven by the cheek. She was speaking with a honeyed voice, but Raven didn’t look very assuaged by her tone.

“...Fine, but I want my panties back,” Ajna folded her wings back up and scowled.

“Oh, believe me, Raven and I are going to have a  _ very _ long talk about boundaries.” Maiike squeezed his cheek in a way that couldn’t have been fun. Raven was a Tukkiqa Aspect and he couldn’t just numb his pain receptors like Ajna and Maiike could.

Ajna gave Raven another long, threatening scowl, and then left Maiike’s room. She heard Maiike talking in a hushed, agitated voice the moment she closed the door. She could hardly believe that Maiike had gone and let him into the house after the last time. Raven had stolen panties from nearly everybody in the family who wore them.  _ Everybody  _ had been extremely pissed at the both of them. Maiike had all but decimated her credibility, and she’d spent the last ten years rebuilding the family’s confidence in her. Toira’s fangs, if it got out that she’d let Raven back into the house, what would it do to the anti-Shard movement?

Ajna bristled with irritation as she came to the conclusion that she’d have to keep this a secret. It irked her that not only would she have to let that little creep get away with this, but if they got found out anyway, it might come out that Ajna knew and didn’t say anything. She stewed in that revelation as she looked through the house for Rai. She found her in one of the smaller gardens where they nurtured frail and finicky strains of flora.

Ajna yelled at Rai about the conservation agreement, wood burning quotas, her support for Korbrass, and all the usual things she yelled at Rai about. It wasn’t a particularly difficult act to pull off, she meant everything she said, and she had plenty of frustration to channel. As per usual, Rai returned the animosity, called Ajna hysterical and told her that if she didn’t like this family, she could leave. All the usual stuff she said when she was angry. Her time properly wasted, Ajna stormed off in a huff with several members of their family watching in uncomfortable silence. The fight was unpleasant and totally pointless. But, if Ajna hadn’t stopped by to do it, Rai may well have grown suspicious.

Ajna strolled by Iosefa on her way out of the house and bid him farewell as she headed towards the nearest bridge. Iosefa quietly mooed at her and clopped a “Bye” on the ground with his hoof in Gur-Rai-San. The nearest bridge wasn’t far, and Ajna partially crossed it to get away from the worst of gravity’s pull so that she could get airborne and start gliding on air currents. She drifted through the Shard, heading towards the Tukkiqa marketplace where she was supposed to meet Qualo. The journey by air didn’t take her a tenth as long as it would have by foot, and soon she glided down into the landmass’ gravity to land on the branch of a tree, which creaked but held her weight just fine. This landmass had good, solid oak trees, some of which had been here since the ritual that had torn the landmasses from Terra a century ago.

She waited there for half an hour before Qualo materialized out of thin air on a nearby branch, and leaned against the tree, looking very relaxed. “Nice landing. Is that hard to do in that form?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I have a lot of practice,” Ajna replied. She’d lived on the Shard for a hundred years but had never known Qualo all that well before today. She found herself regretting that just now, she quite liked the sassy Taion girl. That could partially be a function of how incredibly frustrated she was with her own family at the moment, though.

“So, what’d she say?” Qualo asked, her eyes wandering over Ajna’s harpy form. Ajna was the only Toira who actually used this form, so she figured that Qualo’s attention was just because she’d never seen it before. That, or Qualo was still just openly flirting with her. That seemed a tad hard to believe after what Ajna had done to her the previous night. Maybe she was just that much of a shameless slut that she’d still flirt with her even after Ajna had been such an enthusiastic participant in the punishment Vindassa and Tieralle had concocted for her. Shameless slut, or glutton for punishment, one of the two.

“We’ve got Maiike’s support, as I expected. As a… pleasant surprise, we’ve also got Raven, and he claims to know how to perform the ritual we need,” Ajna omitted as many details as she possibly could.

“Raven? The panty thief?” Qualo asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Yeah,  _ that  _ Raven. He’s also the Tukkiqa’s best fighter, assuming you don’t make him cry right before blades are drawn,” Ajna tried to hide her frustration with Raven and Maiike. Qualo didn’t need to know the excruciating details and it’d only complicate things

“Oh! No, I remember Raven, Iosefa told me about how he and Maiike started dating and she would turn into a giant wolf and—”

“Please, Qualo, I’m begging you, this is one scab I need you not to pick at,” Ajna groaned. Iosefa was such a horrible gossip.

Qualo clapped her hands together and cackled. “Taion’s breath, panty-stealing wolf bitch Raven is Tukkiqa’s best fighter? And he’s going to be doing the ritual for us? Are you shitting me, Ajna?” There was a pregnant pause as Ajna raised an eyebrow at Qualo’s choice of words. It took the other woman half a second to realize it too, and she blushed bright red.

“...No, I’m not. He actually saved my life a half-dozen times when the Humans tried to exterminate us. That feels like forever ago now, though. Hopefully he still remembers how to use his Aspect like he used to,” Ajna sighed and shook her head. Remembering those days made her remember Raven as he had been and not what everybody knew him for now. A peaceful life on the Shard had changed every single one of them. For most of them, it had been an improvement, a chance to live free of fear with their families. For a select few, the adjustment had been… not quite so gracious.

Tukkiqa’s blessing allowed their Aspects to manipulate and control inanimate objects they touched as though they were an extension of their body. They were the builders and craftspeople of the Aspects, but Tukkiqa’s children weren’t helpless in combat. Most Tukkiqa telekinetically fired heavy objects at their foes, or used their Aspect to augment their skills with blade or spear. Raven had used his impressive control over his Aspect to wield a twenty meter-long length of razor wire to deadly effect. The humans had feared him and called him the ‘Rasping Darkness.’ It was too bad for them that they’d never realized all they had to do was tell Raven that he’d applied his mascara wrong and watch as the poor boy was wracked by a panic attack.

“Well, that means all we need to do is turn one of the Ta’valls to our side. Lucky me for having that job,” Qualo sighed.

“We’ll make a good case for it. Someone will step forward, you’ll see,” Ajna gave her a reassuring smile.

Suddenly, the shadowy boughs of their tree lit up with a light equivalent to the flame of Terra’s sun at mid-day. The two of them jumped in surprise, and Qualo bolted to her feet, crouching low on the branch.

“I thought I recognized those wings from when you were spying on us during the raid, Ajna.” Yukoi shouted from below. Ajna looked down and winced, shielding her eyes from the supernaturally powerful flame burning a few inches above Yukoi’s palm. Orobin and Ukra were standing there with her, their eyes as unhindered by the intensely bright light as the Taions’ would be by the complete and utter darkness. The light. It was for Qualo, it would stop her from using her Aspect to escape.

“Eat my ass, Yukoi!” Qualo yelled. “Get out of here, Ajna, I’ll be fine.”

Before Ajna could protest, Qualo leapt out of the tree. She hit the ground rolling and started to run. Ajna didn’t stop to gawk, she used her Aspect. She felt the life force of the tree below her, leaves, branches,  _ the roots.  _ At her request, the roots burst up out of the ground in several places, grabbing and restricting the three Ta’vall aspects below her. 

Her little maneuver bought Qualo some time, and so Ajna didn’t wait around to get caught too. She lifted herself up into the air, beating her wings with all of her supernatural strength to gain some altitude and create some distance. She altered her eyes to better make out details of the chase below her, but as well-lit as the area was, she didn’t need to strain herself much. The three Ta’valls were freeing themselves from the roots of the tree, and Qualo was getting away. Then, out of nowhere, something zipped out of the underbrush at Qualo and struck her. She fell with a yell, hitting the ground hard. It was a pair of bolas, but that meant…

Ukra and Orobin Ta’vall freed themselves and ran towards Qualo. They were joined by Yamir Tukkiqa, a tall, slender man whose face and chest were criss-crossed by scars. He’d thrown the bolas and used his Aspect to guide them unerringly at Qualo’s legs. Ajna cursed angrily, but she didn’t wait around to be captured too. She flapped her wings even harder, pulling herself up and away from the landmass’ gravity. The Ta’valls didn’t pursue her or make any effort to hinder her escape, they were clearly only interested in capturing Qualo. Ajna’s eyes teared up as she abandoned her new friend to her fate and flew to safety. 


	5. Shattered

Tieralle walked through the halls of the Toira’s manor, her eyes darting from place to place, taking in details old and new. She’d been here before on numerous occasions. She’d seen the place when it was first being constructed. She’d seen it when all the Toira had packed themselves inside, thinking they’d all live under one roof. She’d seen it soon after that idea had fallen apart and the building had been converted into a series of offices and conservation areas. She’d never seen the building post-revolutionary uprising, though, and it was an interesting little tour to take. 

Eight days ago, Maiike and Vindassa had made their intentions known to the entire Shard at around the same time that Korbrass had announced Qualo’s arrest, and their own intentions to see the rest of the Taion family join her in captivity. Twenty two Toira and eight Tukkiqa had joined them, swayed by their argument that unmaking the Shard was the safest course of action for everybody. While the turnout hadn’t been quite what they’d hoped for, the unmakers’ decisive first action had gone better than they could have hoped. Maiike and her close family members had secured the Toira’s mansion when Rai went to meet with Korbrass. They’d destroyed several of the key bridges connecting four of the landmasses to the Shard at large, isolating them under unmaker control. While the four landmasses totalled only about five percent of the entire Shard, those particular four counted for over eighty percent of the Shard’s food production. In ten minutes, they were meeting to discuss the best way to leverage that advantage.

Tieralle passed by a bedroom with a door hanging slightly ajar, some of its belongings clearly gathered haphazardly as the occupant had fled in haste. The faintest sounds of crying were coming from within, and when Tieralle used her Aspect, she could feel a single person inside. She stuck her foot into the doorway and nudged the door open so that she could quietly step inside. Sure enough, Caiz was there, tucked away into a shadowy corner, sitting with his head in his arms and his arms suspended on his knees. He was sobbing gently, and clearly hadn’t noticed Tieralle enter the room. She walked over to him and carefully lowered herself so that she was sitting next to him.

“Uh… oh… H-Hi Mommy…” Caiz sniffled, jumping a little bit as he noticed her. Tieralle leaned into him as much as she could without losing her balance, and kissed him on the top of the head.

“Hello, my sweet boy,” she whispered softly to him. Caiz whined and sniffled a little bit, and then leaned back into her, wrapping his arms around her. “Is it Qualo?” she asked him softly.

“Miss her… worried.” Caiz’ voice was muffled by Tieralle’s torso.

“I know, dear, I know.” Tieralle shushed him and rocked and forth a little bit.

Caiz sighed and broke the hug, leaning against the wall with a miserable expression on his face. “It’s not just Qualo, though…” he admitted.

“Oh?” Tieralle shifted her pose, sitting cross-legged next to him and waiting patiently. Caiz was a difficult person to know, sometimes. He pretty much never spoke to anybody outside of his family for almost any reason. Even when he spoke to them, he rarely opened up. On a rare occasion like this when he was trying to open up, the only thing Tieralle had ever found to help him through the process was just to sit patiently and let him go at his own pace.

Caiz shook his head and was silent for a while as he struggled to find the words. “I’ve been thinking about the night we ran from the Ta’valls. You stumbled and I… I could barely even hold you up…” Caiz looked at his hands and grimaced as though he couldn’t stand the sight of them. “I can't help but think… if it had been Qualo or Vin with you…”

“Caiz, sweetie,” Tieralle interrupted him sternly. “I wouldn’t trade you for an extra ten Qualos or Ten Vindassas. I need one of each of you.” Well, she sat patiently and occasionally stopped him from digging himself into a ditch of self-pity.

Caiz looked up from his hands to Tieralle with a confused frown. She met his eyes, and then he laughed. Tieralle chuckled, and within moments, the two were laughing softly at the corny joke and leaning on one another as Caiz wiped his eyes.

“I want to try going back on testosterone,” Caiz said after the two calmed down.

“Of course, dear, you know we’ll all support you, we always do,” Tieralle assured him. Caiz had gone on and off various combinations of hormone supplements over the past century. Each attempt to correct his dysphoria and various body issues merely replaced the existing issues with different ones. Every time, Caiz only ended up frustrated and angry, and stopped taking them.

“I know, it’s… It’s always shit. But… I still think it could work. Last time was pretty good for a while,” he murmured.

“Except for the moustache you started growing, darling, that was an unmitigated catastrophe.” Tieralle teased him.

Caiz snorted and giggled, his face lighting back up. “Oh come on, it wasn’t  _ that  _ bad.”

“Oh, no, sweetheart, it was dreadful. None of us had the heart to tell you,” The two of them laughed and sat together in the corner for a while, enjoying the quiet melancholy of the moment.

“You’re amazing, I love you,” Caiz said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“And I love you too, my sweet little one,” Tieralle kissed his forehead again.

“Umm… M-Miss… Lady Taion?” a quiet voice interrupted them from the doorway.

“Hello there, Raven, you’re looking radiant today,” Tieralle gave the timid Tukkiqa a smile from her corner. Caiz buried his back back into Tieralle’s chest and wrapped his arms around her as she addressed the other boy.

Raven’s eyes went wide as saucers, and he blushed bright red. “Uhh… You’re umm… they want to… T-Thank you, Miss… Uhh…” he stammered.

“Are they expecting me?” Tieralle asked. Raven nodded at her, still blushing and fidgeting as though the simple compliment had shaken his entire world view. “Alright, help me up, darling?” Tieralle rose to her feet with Caiz’ assistance and headed out of the room.

“They’re, uhh… Maiike’s room,” Raven mumbled.

“Raven, darling, have your siblings been bullying you again?” Tieralle asked as she walked past him. She glanced behind her and saw Caiz rising to his feet, and figured he’d probably follow her.

“Uh… no, it’s…” Raven deflected the question.

“Raven,” she spoke sternly.

“...Yes, Miss Taion,” he admitted sheepishly.

“I’ll have words with Torstial and Takkei once this is all over, darling. You don’t need to put up with all of that, you hear me?”

“I’ll, uhh… I’ll try, Miss Taion,” Raven gave her a nervous smile. Tieralle had always tried, with very little success, to bolster Raven’s self-esteem whenever she crossed paths with him. The poor boy just didn’t know what to do with himself without a war to fight.

“...The  _ whole _ point of taking these landmasses was to secure some leverage, why do that if we’re just going to give it up for nothing?” Tieralle heard Maiike getting a little heated as she approached the room where the meeting was happening.

“Getting along, children?” Tieralle asked as she entered the room.

“You’re late,” Takkei said quietly, levitating an ancient Terran coin from one hand to the other. Takkei was the Tukkiqa who’d been voted to represent the eight who’d joined them, the rest were all out sabotaging Torstial’s attempts to build new bridges to their landmass. The main organizers in the room were Maiike, Laioq, Ajna, Tieralle, and Takkei, but a few other Aspects were milling about, wanting for something better to do. Jai’ir usually attended, since he was rarely far from Laioq’s side, but today he was absent. Tieralle didn’t like the idea of Jai’ir running about scouting for threats, as he was to be the Toira in the ritual, but it wasn’t a hill she wanted to die on.

“Family business, darling, I trust you understand,” Tieralle winked at Caiz as she took her seat at the table.

“If we leave a food delivery for the last second, and something goes wrong, people could starve,” Ajna spoke grimly, looking to Tieralle for support.

“Sensible. I do think that these past five days have made our point, don’t you, Maiike?” Tieralle nodded at Ajna, then looked over at Maiike. “Their pantries must have dwindled to nearly nothing by now. I think we could send a small, continuous trickle of foodstuffs to our wayward relatives.”

“That’ll be a lot more work. I had a trebuchet design ready to go. We were going to launch large amounts of food at them.” Takkei grimaced a little bit. Clearly, he’d really wanted to build that trebuchet. They’d been extremely relieved that Takkei had joined them, the man was a bit abrasive but he was one of the finest engineers on the Shard.

“By small… How small do you mean?” Maiike asked, clearly sensing that she was outvoted on the issue with Tieralle around.

“Seventy-three meals worth, three times a day,” Tieralle answered.

There was a moment of quiet as the other people present considered Tieralle’s words, and then Ajna laughed. “Almost literally have them eating out of our hands, then? Gotta say, Tier, I like it.” Tieralle almost told Ajna what she thought of the horrendous truncation of her name, but she decided against it. Another time.

“It’s going to be a lot of work,” Maiike said, echoing Takkei’s concern.

“I rather think we’d prefer working hard for a few days to end the conflict quickly, as opposed to maintaining a cold war for a year or more. The reason we’re seeking to perform this ritual against the wider community’s wishes is because we believe time to be of the essence, am I correct?” The question elicited an uncomfortable silence, followed by a chorus of nods and murmured agreements. Takkei flicked his coin up into the air and let it hover there for a few seconds before his Aspect was no longer able to control it. It fell back down into his palm and he closed his fist around it.

“We’ll set up the supply lines, then. If we’re sending small packages I guess it’s better for me to just build a smaller trebuchet or a catapult,” Takkei grumbled. He  _ definitely  _ wanted to build a ridiculous trebuchet.

“What’s your progress on the bridge we’ll require to reach the pillar, by the way?” Tieralle asked him.

“Got most of the materials together, and we’re holding a meeting tonight to voice concerns and make revisions to the blueprint we’re going to use. The gravity on the landmass we want to use is a bit wonkier than usual so we’re being thorough.” Takkei levitated his coin back up into the air and then looked over at Laioq and Maiike. “Be easier to find materials if you’d let us cannibalize some of this building. A lot of good materials went into making this place.”

All three Toira women scowled at that suggestion, and Takkei raised his hands in defeat. “Alright, nevermind…” he murmured. A moment later, his coin fell to the table, bounced, and rolled off. Takkei cursed and tried to catch it but it continued to roll off to the side. With the room watching him, he uncomfortably straightened back up rather than stand up to fetch it. “...grab it later.”

“Might I suggest, darlings, that we don’t veto that idea, but rather keep it as an emergency provision? We may want to have a plan in place, should Korbrass find a way onto our landmasses unexpectedly.” Tieralle looked over at the three Toira and smiled soothingly. All three women turned their scowls over to Tieralle. Tieralle held her ground for a few moments, and succeeded in getting Ajna and Laioq to back down a bit.

“...Maybe.” Ajna grumbled.

“But only take materials from where we say you can,” Laioq added.

“What?” Maiike looked over at her sisters, betrayal in her eyes.

“It’s not like we’ll need the manor, if we succeed, you know.” Ajna mumbled.

“Without this place, the Shard’s ecosystem will collapse in a year. What if we don’t succeed?” she demanded angrily.

“I will remind you, darling, that our belief is that the Shard may well suffer a dimensional collapse long before an ecological one.” Tieralle spoke softly.

“...Fine. I’ll mark some non-essential rooms that you can pull apart if it’s an emergency, Takkei.” Maiike sulked, crossing her thick arms and staring out the window.

The meeting wound down, and ended with all three Toira women bickering over which rooms would be ‘non-essential’ and then finally all four of them left the room to start going over each of the manor’s individual rooms. Everybody else left, and Caiz approached Tieralle.

“So… Tieralle…” Caiz murmured anxiously.

“Yes, my love?” she turned to him.

“We unmake the Shard… we go back to Terra… how do we save Qualo after all that?” he asked.

“Oh, don’t you worry, darling. Qualo is plenty capable of charming her way to safety,” she said, suppressing her grin. She loved Qualo dearly, but ‘charming’ was one of the last words she’d ever use to describe her little sister.

Caiz frowned at her, and then snort-laughed. “She’s so screwed if we don’t help her, isn’t she?”

***

Qualo really liked anal sex. Sometimes Vindassa would fuck her in the ass for an hour or more and she rarely got tired of it. Even when the person fucking her didn’t particularly know what they were doing, she still tended to enjoy herself.

She enjoyed herself as Orobin’s meaty hands gripped her hips and he repeatedly thrust his rather average cock into her ass (which was still considerably larger than hers.) For all the deep grunting and groaning he was doing, he actually wasn’t really getting any nice deep thrusts in. It was all well and good, she was trying her best to suck on Yukoi’s clit and she didn’t need the extra jostling.

“Ohhh… s’good…” Yukoi murmured, running her fingers through Qualo’s hair. Orobin was a big guy, but Yukoi was absolutely fucking ripped, and she handled Qualo like she was a doll. That was the main reason she’d enjoyed having sex with Yukoi in the past and it was holding true even now.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Korbrass interrupted the three-way with their typical icy disdain.

“Oh! T-Ta’v—” Orobin groaned, quaking erratically as he came in Qualo’s ass at the inopportune moment. It was probably pretty embarrassing for him, but Qualo thought it was funny. She was having sex with Orobin and Yukoi, but she was still pretty annoyed at them for the whole capturing her thing.

“It’s kinda exactly what it looks like, Kor,” Yukoi said. She kept her hand on the back of Qualo’s head and in fact, applied  _ more _ pressure. Qualo did her best not to laugh right into Yukoi’s pussy at the absurdity of the situation, but Yukoi couldn’t have made her intentions much clearer. She continued to suck on her cunt even as Korbrass bristled in anger.

“Get her face out of your cunt, Yukoi,” Korbrass yelled. Orobin pulled his cock free of her ass and cleared his throat nervously.

“Just… hold on…” Yukoi murmured, her grip on Qualo’s skull tightening. Qualo continued to eat her out through her orgasm, and the fact that Korbrass just stood there and fumed over it only made her lick the other woman’s pussy even harder. Yukoi let go of Qualo’s head with a happy sigh, and learned back in her chair.

“You two… you’re just supposed to watch her, you know that, right? How are you supposed to watch her if you’re jizzing in her asshole?” Korbrass asked, their voice boiling over with anger.

“Oh piss off, you miserable hag,” Qualo said after giving Yukoi’s pussy a courtesy suck. “You’re holding me in a spare bedroom in your mansion, guarding me with people I’ve known for a hundred years and had sex with dozens of times. This isn’t a war and you’re not some grand general. This is some role playing power trip bullshit of yours.” Yukoi chuckled at her comment, and Orobin coughed like he’d been punched in the chest.

“It’s not a war, is it? We’re all just friends, one big happy family? How do you have the balls to say that after you tried to destroy our home? I can’t believe you’d be so selfish as to put all of our lives at risk - and for what? Because you’re not as popular here as you’d like to be?” Korbrass sneered at her. That was a surprise, Qualo had tried to bait Korbrass into an argument all week and they hadn’t taken the bait once. Still, she found her own anger spiking up at Korbrass’ ridiculous analysis. 

“The three of you all lived together on Terra, didn’t you? What were your lives like? An ordinary life, you got blessed by Ta’vall, and then you were trusted with the sacred role of protecting your fellow Aspects? You got the honor of keeping the peace amongst the human nations?” Qualo demanded, her voice escalating in volume as she escalated the argument.

“You know nothing about what I’ve done for Terra and for us,” Korbrass replied icily.

“Well, she’s about right as far as I’m concerned,” Yukoi answered Qualo with a post-orgasmic murmur. There was a moment of tension in the air as Orobin and Korbrass bristled at the other woman’s contradictory honesty.

“Well, my brother stabbed me in the gut after I told him I thought I might be trans. I lay on the floor bleeding and dying for hours before Taion paid me his little visit. I was almost killed again trying to escape the city, and then I almost starved on my way to join the Taion convent. And then, you know what? My new family treated me like absolute garbage because I refused to kill for them. They treated Tieralle like garbage because of her disability, and they treated Caiz like garbage because of his endocrine disorder. Vin is the only reason we even survived long enough to make it here to the Shard with you, and you know fucking what, Kor? I fucking love it here.” She’d recited much of the speech in the long moments of isolation she’d spent locked in the Ta’vall’s spare room, but she ended up going free style for most of it anyway.   
  
Korbrass was a little taken aback by it, clearly not expecting her diatribe to go in the direction that it went. “You love it here, huh?” They asked, their voice thick with mockery and disbelief.

“Yeah. Nobody licks my boots like they do yours, but I’m not unpopular, I have friends, I have my family. It’s been safe here for a century. The last thing I want is to go back to Terra, but we don’t have any other choice. If my asshole cousins from Terra don’t bring the Shard down then we’ll just suffocate eventually anyway. I don’t like it any more than you do, Kor, but it’s the only safe option and pretending otherwise won’t make it any less true.”

There was a long moment of silence in the brightly-lit room. Korbrass was perfectly still as they stared at Qualo, digesting her words. Without even the tiniest hint of warning, they slapped her, sending her toppling sideways with a cry of pain.

“Hey!” Orobin growled.

“Oh come on Orobin, don’t be such a cliche. She’s not going to fall for you just because you fucked her.” Korbrass scoffed at Orobin as he stood between them and Qualo.

“No, Kor, I won’t stand idle while you abuse a prisoner. We would never have done that back on Terra.” Orobin stood firm as Qualo groaned and tried to get back up on her knees. Her head spun and ached, Korbrass had slapped her really hard.

“Yeah, hitting her is pretty unethical,” Yukoi agreed nonchalantly.

“You two were just spit roasting her!” Korbrass snapped angrily. “Ugh, such hypocrites, all of you.”

“Well, we were bored, and she suggested it,” Yukoi shrugged.

“Eh, I figured that we’ve had a three-way before, so whatever.” Qualo groaned as she woozily got up off the floor. Her face still smarted, and she could feel where the ring on Korbrass’ middle finger had dug into her cheek.

“I… We would have stopped if you’d asked, you know that, right Qualo?” Orobin asked her sheepishly.

“Yeah, yeah. You two are bootlickers, not rapists,” Qualo sighed and rolled her eyes. None of the Ta’valls had any chill.

“Well, Kor gets me to lick their boots sometimes, but—”   
  
“Wait, Yukoi, you’re joking, right?” Qualo barked out a laugh. She wouldn’t kink-shame Yukoi over it but it  _ was  _ funny that Yukoi actually did it literally, if it was true.

“Shut up! Both of you!” Korbrass snapped. Qualo glanced at them dourly, and saw that they were trembling with anger. She legitimately felt sorry for Korbrass It must be miserable to have so much anger but nowhere to direct it except for Qualo’s dumb jokes.

“Why’re you here anyway, Kor?” Yukoi asked.

Korbrass watched Yukoi silently for a moment, looking like they were almost at a loss. “The ballistae are ready ahead of schedule, it’s time to go. Secure Qualo, I need you two with me.” They finally said, casting a dour glance at Qualo as they stormed out of the ‘prison.’

“Go ahead, Yukoi, I’ll fix her bindings and get her some food. Keep Kor on-track, okay?” Orobin said softly.

“Yeah. They’re under a lot of pressure,” Yukoi agreed with a sigh. She followed Korbrass, shutting the door behind her.

“So, Orobin, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let me—”

  
“Did you mean what you said, Qualo?” Orobin asked suddenly.

“Yeah? Well, most of it. I sort of simplified the part about my brother stabbing me, and my problem with the other Taions was sort of a mix of authority issues and—”

“No, the part about the harpoon being sent from Terra. You… You think another one might come?” Orobin said, his voice strained. He walked around in front of Qualo and sat in the chair Yukoi had been occupying. Qualo watched him curiously for a moment, and saw how much he was fidgeting. She’d never known Orobin well but she’d never seen him as anything but a picture of rigid composure.

“Well, I sure as fuck know none of us sent it, and besides, you saw it, didn’t you? It sure looked to me like it came from  _ inside _ the pillar, didn’t it? And, yeah, if they sent one, why can’t they send two?” Qualo spoke carefully, wondering if this was some kind of reverse interrogation.

Orobin was silent for a while, shaking his head and staring off into space. “After all this time… How? Why would they...?” he asked quietly.

“The Humans started their crusade to purge all magic from Terra a century ago. Maybe it’s finally run its course; a century is a long time. Maybe this is the first time the surviving Taions had a moment to breathe. Maybe they miss us, maybe they’re still just a total bunch of assholes.” Qualo suggested with a shrug. She had no way of knowing one way or another, but she’d been thinking about it while the Ta’valls had her imprisoned, and it seemed as good a theory as any to her.

Orobin exhaled deeply, and leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands. “I can’t… can’t believe I’m considering this…” He croaked, sounding like he was crying.

“Wait, Orobin, you’re actually thinking of letting me out? Was my ass really that good?” Qualo asked.

Orobin looked up at her with tears running down his cheeks. He met Qualo’s eyes with a look of uncomprehension on his face, and then laughed. “That’s not…” The two of them shared a brief, tense laugh which devolved into more partial sobbing from Orobin. “Korbrass will never forgive me if I do this…”

“Do you love them, Oro?” Qualo asked quietly, and the big man recoiled against the statement like Qualo had kicked him in the gut.

“Yes. Of course I do. They saved this family from the humans, built the Shard, built all of this, but… their behavior recently, I don’t… They’re not the same fearless, uncompromising, indomitable person that they were back on Terra.” As Orobin started to describe Korbrass, he straightened up, tall and proud, but then as he spoke he deflated, looking down at the floor in defeat.

“Well, I’m going to have to disagree with you, Orobin.  _ We  _ built the shard, every single one of us, together. The Shard is great because it’s a community, not a Monarchy. We can be a community again back on Terra. Fuck, maybe if we cut back on the familial politics a little then we can be an even better community.” Qualo pressed him.

“...No. They’ll never forgive me…” Orobin whispered, and let out a shuddering, sorrowful sigh. “I can’t do this.” Orobin stood up, and Qualo tried to protest. But before she could, he walked around behind her and grabbed the ropes binding her wrists together. She heard him forming a shard of ice in his hand, and he tugged on the ropes, slicing them until they fell apart.

“Orobin, Vindassa said you know how to perform the ritual we need to take the Shard down.” Qualo said as she flexed her arms and fingers. They’d been tied behind her back for four days and were incredibly stiff. The ball of Ta’vall flame burning at the top of the room made her Aspect all but useless, so the ropes had been totally unnecessary.

“I do,” he replied, slicing through the ropes around Qualo’s ankles. “Korbrass made Yukoi and I learn it.”

Taion’s breath, you’re really bad at bondage, Orobin,” Qualo grumbled, rubbing her numb ankles to try and get some feeling back into them. Orobin had been the one to tie her up this way in the first place, and the work was absolutely amateurish. Tieralle would never cut off her circulation like this. 

“What do you mean? They didn’t fall off or anything, I saw you try to get out.” he said, looking legitimately confused.

“That’s not what I… nevermind,” Qualo shook her head. Honestly, Orobin couldn’t have been more of a himbo if he tried. “Vin and the others are going to need your help to complete the ritual, and the sooner we do it, the less likely Korbrass is to do something drastic and get people hurt. Can you get to my family?”

“Vindassa and Maiike took the Toira compound and a few other landmasses, and severed all bridges leading to them. The only way onto them will be with the assault group, but I just betrayed Korbrass…” Orobin heaved a sigh.

“Assault group? What’s happening?” She asked, tentatively rising up onto her feet. She still had pins and needles in her extremities, but she could walk.

“We’re hiding some ballistae in the bridge that leads to the impact site. We’re going to fire some bolts with ropes attached and climb a team onto the island,” He explained, still wringing his hands together.

“Uhh… Oro, you realize that Korbrass won’t know that you’re betraying them just yet, right? Can’t you just go with the assault group and pretend everything is normal?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh. Um. Yeah, I guess I can, can’t I?” He cleared his throat, embarrassed that he hadn’t realized. Orobin was going to be the Shard’s worst double agent. Qualo wondered if he could keep it together for even the trivial amount of time it’d take to defect properly.

“Yeah. You can handle it, Orobin, I believe in you,” she smiled at him encouragingly. As the awkward silence hung in the room, she leaned forward on her tip toes and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled at that, clearly far more nervous than she was despite the fact that she’d been tied up moments ago.

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” he murmured.

“I can. You’ve got too much integrity to follow Korbrass into whatever fuck fest it is they’re planning,” she lied. Truth be known, she’d never expected Orobin to turn, she’d been rehearsing conversations with Rita in her head over and over while she’d been in captivity.

“Ta’vall’s burning heart… Well, the manor will be cleared, we’re all going on this assault, so you can probably just slip away. I don’t know how you’re going to get back to your family, though,” he sighed.

“Honestly? I think I’ll just steal some food and hide for a bit. I can find my family once we’re back on Terra, once Korbrass backs down, or once we’re all dead. Whichever comes first,” Orobin frowned a little bit, clearly not appreciating her morbid humour. Qualo just rolled her eyes at him. “Come on, get going before they get suspicious.” She slumped down in Yukoi’s chair, exhausted in spite of the fact that she’d spent several days tied up lying on a mattress. It was harder work than she would have guessed. “Oh, and Orobin?”

He turned around and looked at her, halfway through the door, his posture still so thoroughly laced with anxiety that Qualo was sure that he’d get caught immediately. “Yeah?”

“If my family doesn’t trust you, tell Tieralle that she’ll have to try again if she wants to give Qualo puppies,” She said, smiling tiredly. If her family had any doubts, then the obscure joke should convince them that Orobin had spoken with Qualo.

“I… don’t understand.” he said, looking completely confused.

“Don’t worry about it, just tell her,” she winked at him, and he left, confused. “Taion’s breath, I hope he doesn’t fuck this up.”

***

Vindassa spotted the big man approaching the bridge, and it took them only about half a second to realize who it was. Orobin Ta’vall was running for all he was worth, looking distraught and frantic like they’d never seen the man before. Vindassa had fought alongside Orobin against the worst humanity had to offer when the odds and the future had never looked more dark, and the big man had never been anything but composed, stoic, and determined. Vindassa drew their short sword from its sheath and slid through the shadows, appearing right in the middle of the path Orobin was running down.

“V-Vin??” Orobin tried to skid to a halt, but he tripped on a rock and fell forward. He hit the ground with a thud and a groan. Vindassa watched him, confused and a little taken aback. How had Orobin gotten here? The bridges were closed. Was this some sort of infiltration attempt or sleight of hand from Korbrass? If so, why not send someone a little more gracious than Orobin.

_ “What’s going on, Orobin?”  _ Vindassa asked, standing about ten meters away. It was just close enough to communicate with him. Vindassa would have preferred a little more distance from the deadly Ta’vall Aspect, but shouting wasn’t an option for them.

“I… uhh…” Orobin picked himself up onto unsteady feet. The man was a mess, he was crying and kept glancing behind him. “I’m here to… help?” he offered.

_ “You’re going to have to do better than that, Orobin. How’d you get here?”  _ Vindassa resisted the urge to cross their arms in frustration. Part of them felt like this was some elaborate plot to get them to drop their guard, it was so uncharacteristic of both Korbrass and Orobin to do something like this. Vindassa had known Korbrass for over a century and they had never done anything but go straight for their problems’ throats, as it were.

“We concealed some ballistae in the bridge to the impact site and used them to connect some ropes to this landmass. I volunteered to cross first and burned the ropes behind me. It won’t take them more than forty minutes to reset and cross with everybody else,” Orobin explained, glancing over his shoulder at the Ta’vall’s landmass looming in the sky. 

Ballistae in the bridge, that was actually clever. Vindassa should have thought of that. They pulled out their binoculars and peered at the strange, twisted shape of the bridge connecting the Ta’vall’s manor to the impact site. It was too far away to be immediately obvious, but after several moments, they did see some signs of movement. They lowered the binoculars and glanced back at Orobin, who not only hadn’t tried to make an aggressive move, but was fidgeting even more anxiously than before.

_ “You want to help? Tell me how Qualo is doing,”  _ They demanded.

“Oh, she’s fine. Well, I mean… I set her free. She, uhh… Korbrass was… She’s fine. She convinced me to help you.” Orobin rambled incoherently. The use of ‘she’s fine’ twice wasn’t especially convincing.

_ “I want to trust you, Orobin, but it’s a tough sell.”  _ Vindassa said, shaking their head a little. Did they have any other option? Was the tip about the ballistae good enough?

“Oh, Qualo told me… She told me to tell Tieralle that she was going to have to try again to… what was it… give Qualo puppies?” He offered with a shrug and a nervous smile.

Vindassa raised an eyebrow at the strange comment. That did sound like the kind of code phrase Qualo might think up. It also reminded Vindassa of some of the jokes Tieralle tended to make about making Caiz and Qualo pregnant with her gigantic strapons. They made a decision in the moment to trust Orobin. If this was a ruse, then they didn’t see much of a path to victory through calling him on it.  _ “Alright, we need to warn the others and prepare for the attack. You’re going to have to help us perform the ritual to unmake the Shard.” _

“Yeah, I know how, Kor made sure Yukoi and I knew it too, just in case,” Orobin explained, despite the fact that Vindassa had literally been a part of that very conversation back on Terra. Vindassa decided to cut him some slack; Orobin looked nervous enough to puke.

_ “Let’s get going then, it sounds like time is of the essence.” _

***

Orobin told his story before all but two of the members of the unmakers. They had two people out watching the bridges, Ajna and another Toira in avian form. Even now, if Maiike glanced up at the sky, she could see the snowy white dot of Ajna circling around the bridge that was the most direct route to their home. Orobin’s estimate of forty minutes had been too generous, by the time Vindassa had gotten back to the compound and rallied Takkei’s siblings to disassemble the bridge, Korbrass had secured it. It was only by the grace of the fact that Korbrass had paused there rather than charge blindly across that they even had time to hold this meeting.

“How many of your siblings will you need to assemble our bridge to the pillar?” Tieralle asked Takkei.

“All seven of us. Each of us has a specific job.” Takkei answered immediately.

“Eight,” Maiike said crossly, putting her hand on Raven’s shoulder. Raven’s popularity amongst even his own family wasn’t great, but comments like that were uncalled for. Raven looked over at her and smiled sheepishly.

“What? Oh, Raven’s not an architect. He doesn’t know how to build anything; he’d just get in the way. Besides, he needs to be there anyway, he’s needed for the ritual.” The explanation made sense, but Maiike was still annoyed. She was protective of her little mouse.

“Alright then, all seven of you, and the four who are to perform the ritual. Go now, leave the Ta’valls to the rest of us,” Tieralle addressed them. The team of eleven Aspects nodded and left, except for Raven, who lingered a little bit at Maiike’s side.

“Raven,” Maiike reached over and cupped his face with her hand gently. He looked up at her with those big, beautiful eyes of his and waited patiently for what she had to say. “I can handle myself from here. Go join Vindassa and the others. I’ll see you back on terra, little birdie,” She leaned forward and kissed him, roughly forcing her tongue into his mouth.

“Y-Yes, Miss Maiike,” Raven cleared his throat, flustered. He fidgeted a little bit, but didn’t go just yet.

“Raven,” Maiike growled, shapeshifting some of her features towards the lupine. Her voice came out as an intimidating growl. Raven jumped, nodded, did an awkward little bow, and then ran off. The huge length of wire he used as a weapon was still wrapped around his arm even though he probably wouldn’t need it today.

“Enough of the puppy eyes for the pervert,” Laioq commented dryly as Raven got out of earshot.

“Oh, spare me Laioq. I know how  _ you  _ feel about ‘puppy eyes,’” Maiike replied smugly, continuing the shapeshift, taking on a few more wolf features. To her credit, Laioq kept her composure. It was really quite ridiculous, everybody in the family knew about her werewolf fetish but she still tried to pretend it was a secret. Nobody kept a secret in this family for long. It was her loss, Maiike would gladly have fucked Laioq in that form if she could actually be bothered to take the stick out of her ass to make room for Maiike’s dick first.

“Come now, no time for bickering, children,” Tieralle said with a chuckle. “We need to organize some strategy.

“Yeah. I’m going to use the elder tree. I’ll need some of you confident in your flora chanting to help me out,” Maiike said. The statement drew some gasps from her siblings. The elder tree was the first sapling they’d planted when they’d formed the Shard. Maiike had spent the past century using her Aspect to shape it and nurture it. It towered over them, even now, one of the most defining features of the Shard.

“Maiike… you can’t be serious?” Laioq asked. “You love that tree.”

“I do. But I grew it as a shrine to Terra, the world that the humans sought to despoil so deeply that they attacked us, her guardians. But now we’re going back, we’ll be able to fulfill Toira’s wishes and protect Terra as we were meant to. The tree can serve her final purpose helping us protect the ritual and return home.” A solemn silence spread across the assembled Aspects at her words. The look in their eyes filled Maiike with love for her family, frustrating as they sometimes were.

“Alright, I’m with you. We’ll stop them in their tracks.” Laioq spoke up first. “Flora chanters, come with Maiike and me, everybody else, watch the bridge at our flank.” The group split up into two nearly even teams, seven people standing with Maiike, and ten already taking on animal forms to head off towards the secondary bridge onto the landmass. 

“Good luck, my friends,” Tieralle smiled at them, and then went to join the flank team.

The walk to the elder tree wasn’t long, but as they got close, the tree’s massive roots popped up out of the ground in places, forcing them to climb over the rough terrain. They reached the trunk, and Maiike placed her hand on it. She glanced back over at the white speck of Ajna in the sky, and saw that she was flying counterclockwise now, rather than clockwise. The Ta’valls were crossing.

“Alright, everybody, I’m going to be the one requesting the tree’s assistance. I need you all to chant to her and ask her to listen to me. She’s huge, so our individual voices will just be just a whisper. We need to chant in unison for her to hear us.” The nine of them fanned out around the massive trunk of the tree, finding ample room for each of them to place a hand on her trunk. Laioq looked over at Maiike and nodded to her encouragingly.

Maiike tapped into her Aspect and started to commune with the tree. She felt the scope of the massive, one hundred and fifty meter tall organism. It was overwhelming, the scope of a living thing being so huge that it made her look like an ant. She felt the voice of her family members calling to her, calling to the tree. The elder tree wasn’t sentient, not in the way that some animals were. Flora chanting was about asking plants for help, but they couldn’t really say no, they responded to the request in a reflexive manner, so long as the voice was loud enough and saying the right things.

She closed her eyes and felt through the roots of the tree. There. She felt the invaders by tracking their footsteps. She couldn’t see them, but as she immersed herself in the tree’s root system, a clearer and clearer picture began to form in her mind. She watched them, there were twenty… twenty two... twenty five of them.

_ ‘Rise.’ _

The elder tree’s roots burst up through the ground. Maiike tore up the landmass with all the ferocity she could muster, striking the invaders with roots and churning the rock and soil into untraversable rubble. The ground shook as the flailing roots of the elder tree made the entire landmass shudder in the strange grip of its pocket of gravity. Maiike focused more upon tearing up the ground than she did on attacking the invaders, her goal was to stop them, not kill them, and she had such massive strength at her disposal right now that she may well cause damage she didn’t intend.

One of her roots vanished, burned away in a flash of heat and pain. As the Ta’valls recovered from her initial assault, it happened more and more. Jets of flame incinerated the assaulting appendages, and Maiike felt each one keenly. She fought through the burning pain of the Ta’valls’ counterattack and continued ripping apart her family home. She felt the manor collapse under the strain of the tremors. She tore apart the bridge that the invaders had crossed. She tried to reach out and go after the other bridge, but it was on the other side of the landmass and the roots didn’t quite reach.

“Toira’s fangs!” Someone shouted nearby, the curse accompanied by a wave of heat. Suddenly, Maiike cried out in pain as the elder tree itself was struck with an intensely powerful jet of flame. The stream of fire was so hot that it didn’t just set fire to the elder tree, it atomized branches, leaves, bark, everything. That had to be Yukoi, nobody else made flames like that.

She struggled to keep up the assault, trying to tear the entire landmass in two so that she could strand the invaders on a floating rock. The ground rumbled as she ripped up the rocks and the soil, but the jet of flame continued to obliterate the tree, burning leaves, branches and huge segments of the tree’s bark. Burning debris fell all around her and she felt the heat flush her face.

“Maiike!” Someone grabbed her and pulled her away from the elder tree. The loss of connection was so shocking that Maiike screamed, clutching her head with her hands. “Maiike! We have to go, it’s not safe.” It was Laioq’s voice, cutting through the discordant ringing in Maiike’s ears.

She opened her eyes to the scene of destruction around her. The fire was spreading and more of the tree was crumbling above them. Soon it would be all around them. The rest of her siblings were already running, it was just Laioq who had stayed with her. “D-Did… we?” she asked.

“Looks like the invaders’ main force won’t be able to follow unless they can set up another one of those ridiculous ballista with ropes,” Laioq said, looking behind her at the sundered earth.

Laioq helped her up, and the two of them started to run from the smoldering remnants of the giant tree, heading towards the bridge so that they could meet up with the ritual team. The two of them joined the other six at the top of a hill even as the trunk of the elder tree cracked and splintered. The tree was so tall that it extended beyond the grasp of the landmass’ gravity, and so it fell with a slow, awkward stiffness as the crumbling trunk tried to take the weightless upper boughs with it down to the shattered land. Maiike’s six siblings were all staring at something else, though.

“What’s going… on.” Laioq murmured, trailing off. The bridge to the landmass where the ritual was going to take place had been torn down. They hadn’t discussed that particular move, but it made sense for Takkei to do so. Their new bridge, the one to the pillar, was slowly taking form. The Tukkiqa levitated wooden beams and struts and supports into position, forming a massive winding set of stairs that quickly approached the pillar. Soon, the structure would reach beyond gravity’s pull, and it would shift from being a set of stairs to a loose scaffold.

Snaking along the land towards the ruins of the old bridge, though, was another fully built bridge. Maiike adjusted her eyes into ones with better-long distance vision, and saw a team of six Tukkiqa levitating the bridge, no doubt intent on installing it into the gap left by the one the ritual team had torn down behind them. It only took Maiike a moment to spot Korbrass leading the group.

“They must have gone the long way around and gotten past our siblings. I see Korbrass, Yamir, Torstial…” Laioq murmured.

“Yeah. Do you think we can stop them?” Maiike asked, even as Korbrass’ team started floating the bridge through the abyss towards the other landmass. She had no idea how long it would take them to cross, but they weren’t going about it with any degree of uncertainty. It wouldn’t be long.

“I’m exhausted. Used my Aspect a little too much, chanting the tree…” Laioq replied, and the statement received murmurs of agreement from the other six Toira.

“Well, let’s hope that those Tukkiqa are just as exhausted. Gotta be a lot of work, carrying that bridge, yeah?”

“Yeah. Let’s go show them Toira’s teeth,” Laioq said with a chuckle, smiling to bear her newly-formed fangs.

***

The ritual chamber that Takkei and his siblings created was basically just a long platform that connected to the pillar with a few walls around it just in case some Ta’vall got close enough to fling a shard of ice at them. Vindassa, Raven, Jai’ir, and Orobin were all at work, murmuring incantations and drawing lines on the pillar in chalk. Caiz didn’t understand any of it, but clearly, abstract magic like this  _ worked,  _ it had formed the Shard in the first place, after all.

Caiz floated just outside the room, half his time spent watching the four of them prepare to perform the ritual, the other half keeping an idle eye on the brawl taking place on the bridge below them. As far as they could tell, some of the invaders had ripped up one of the bridges leading onto the landmass where the others had made their stand, and tried to use it to cross over the landmass they were using to perform the ritual. Takkei and his siblings had gone down to try and stop them, and it looked like a group had also engaged them from the back. It was impossible to see exactly who was winning at this distance, but the bridge had not gone down, and Caiz kept seeing flashes of lightning in the dim twilight.

_ “Caiz, baby,”  _ Vindassa’s voice interrupted his torpor.

“Whuh? Yeah?” he asked. Jai’ir, Orobin, and Raven floated in a circle at the center of the room. Vindassa hovered just a few steps away, looking at him. Caiz hadn’t really known what role to play in this whole plan, so eventually he’d been drafted as a lookout.

_ “You can’t stay in the circle, it’ll disrupt the flow of the magic. Head down the bridge and keep watch, if someone slips past, do what you can to stop them. If this all goes right, we’ll be back on Terra in two hours.”  _ Vindassa came over to him and gave him a crushing hug.

“R-Right. I’ll do what I can,” Caiz agreed, anxiety blossoming in his chest. Back on Terra in two hours… it was a surreal thought.

_ “We’ll see our sisters again soon, okay?”  _ they whispered to him as they let him go. Before Caiz could go, Vindassa leaned down and gave him a kiss and an encouraging smile. Caiz nodded at them and pushed off the floor, floating back towards the array of ropes and handholds that was the microgravity-section of their little structure that was going to tear a hole in the fabric of reality.

Caiz descended a few dozen meters before he found a spot to wait that had a good rope to hold on to and a decent enough view of the ground below. Almost as soon as he stopped, a ripple passed through the air like the shockwave of an explosion. Caiz shuddered as the wave passed over him, filling him with a sense of eerie unease. He looked up, and saw…Well, that was something.

A ring of blue, dusted by irregular white streaks, was beginning to spread out across the surface of the normally pitch-black pillar at the center of the Shard. It grew steadily, wrapping around the curved surface of the pillar as it went. It looked like… was that the sky of Terra? It was hard to remember what the sky had looked like, it had been so long, but Caiz knew that something was off about it. It was like the entire panorama of Terra’s skyline had been compressed and twisted into the tiny, growing bubble. The distortion passed over one of the fractures that radiated out from the impact site, and it lit up like a torch. The crack glowed with an angry, sickly red light that pulsed like the heartbeat of a dying creature.

Caiz drifted down a little further, feeling a little ill at ease with the growing dimensional anomaly just a few dozen meters away from him. He went back to watching the ground below him, and he spotted something immediately. A lone figure was approaching the staircase, a figure he recognized. He stared at her for nearly a minute before he let himself believe that it was indeed Qualo. She approached the staircase, loosely holding onto an axe in one hand, and the other clutching her forehead.

How had she gotten here? The bridges were all down. Once, Caiz had dared her to try and shadow slide all the way from one landmass to another. She’d managed to pull it off, crazy woman that she was, but it had taken her four hours and she’d had a migraine for days afterwards.

“Hey! Qualo!” Caiz shouted elatedly, waving down at her. He kind of doubted that she could hear or see him, though, she wasn’t even looking up the staircase. She was… looking over at…

Qualo vanished, and an instant later, a series of frozen projectiles soared through where she had been. Caiz blinked, and then looked over at where the icy javelins had originated from. There was another figure there, tall, imperious, and wearing a frigging dress in the middle of a battle. Korbrass.

Caiz’ heart fluttered in terror, and he immediately pushed himself away from his perch. He floated downwards as quickly as he could, trying to get in range to assist Qualo. If he could just get close, he could blind Korbrass, and Qualo could dispatch them easily. That was a long way down, though, and Korbrass was flinging lethal projectiles at his sister every single second he wasted.

Lightning danced off of Korbrass’ fingers, striking the tree Qualo was hiding behind and setting it ablaze. Qualo ran, darting through an open area and reaching the shadow of a nearby tree, vanishing immediately. The fight was still for a moment, as Qualo no doubt took a moment to recover from the multiple jumps. Korbrass, too, stood there unsteadily. They must have been exhausted, too. After the pause, they raised their hand, and an intense flame formed above it, flooding the area with light so bright that Caiz had to raise his hand to block it. He was close enough now that he could hear Kobrass yelling something, though he couldn’t make it out. 

Qualo emerged from behind a rock, and threw her handaxe without a moment’s hesitation. Even from as far away as Caiz was, he could see the throw was way off. That worried him, Qualo could hit an apple in someone’s mouth with a knife if she wanted (not that anybody ever volunteered to let her try) so if she was throwing so far off, could it mean that she was badly hurt?

Korbrass ignored the errant projectile and created another series of icy javelins. Qualo ducked back behind her rock before the barrage skewered her. The hand axe passed through the shadow of a tree, and something happened to it. It suddenly changed course, twisting through the air and flying directly at Korbrass. Qualo had created some shadow tendrils and grabbed the projectile to reorient it mid-flight.

Korbrass cried out in surprise, raising both of their arms and creating a sheet of ice to protect themselves. The axe bounced off the ice, but Qualo appeared right behind Korbrass, right inside their own shadow cast by the shield they’d created to protect themselves from the axe. There was a glint of steel as Qualo brought a knife to bear, planting it in Korbrass’ back.

Caiz’ spirits soared, but then plummeted immediately when he realized something was wrong. Sparks were flying, small arcs of electricity dancing off the two combatants bodies. Qualo’s face was a picture of pain and she subtly twisted and vibrated in agony. Somehow, Korbrass had electrified their own body, and Qualo was holding onto a knife that was conducting it into her.

Caiz cried out in alarm as he reached a new handhold and drifted into it face-first, he was so transfixed by the fight unfolding below him. As he grabbed the handhold, he realized that he could feel the smallest beginnings of the landmass’ gravity on him. He steadied himself and looked down at the fight just in time to see the electricity stop. Qualo fell backwards, hitting the ground with a thud, and Korbrass stumbled forward, doubling over in pain.

_ “Just fall down, come on, please, fall…”  _ Caiz prayed.

Korbrass reached around to their back and withdrew the knife, tossing it onto the ground. They clutched the wound with one hand, and then screamed in pain as tiny flames danced across their fingers. They were cauterizing the wound. After they finished, they looked down at Qualo, and formed a frozen javelin in their hand. Caiz’ heart stopped.

_ “No…! Qualo, please! _

Korbrass stared at Caiz’ sister for a few seconds, and then let the ice melt. Mercifully, they let her live and started shambling towards the staircase. Caiz clung to the handhold to stop himself from drifting down any lower, and twisted himself into a small little cubby. There was no way that Korbrass could keep going. Who could suffer injuries like that, and then climb a flight of stairs up into this structure? All he had to do was hide and they’d give up. Vindassa would complete the ritual, and the fighting could stop. To confirm it for himself, Caiz looked up, and saw the twisted, impossible circle of Terra’s skyline was still there and still growing. The cracks in the pillar still stood out like angry red blood vessels, pulsing with malice as the ritual progressed.

He felt it, suddenly: Korbrass’ mind. He dared not peek out from his hiding spot, but he could sense the bundle of synapses that were the field in which he could plant his hallucinations. He almost immediately sent Korbrass an overwhelming cacophony of sounds and lights out of pure reflex and anger, but he just barely managed to stop himself. If he revealed himself in that way, Korbrass would just let themselves drift back down towards the landmass, they’d get out of range, spot him, and skewer him with those ice javelins, burn him to a crisp, or shock him until his heart burst. No, he had to wait until they were further off the ground. If he could disable their senses when they were totally weightless, he could completely disorient them. Without gravity, it was hard enough to tell which was up and which was down even with the ability to see and hear and touch. He could strand them on the bridge without a way to navigate, and that might buy Vindassa and the others enough time to complete the ritual.

He hid, trembling and doing his best to keep his breathing quiet as Korbrass ascended, intent on stopping what Vindassa, Raven, Jai’ir, and Orobin had started. Caiz felt the tiniest little pull of gravity on him now, so he’d need to wait for Korbrass to be just a bit above him. He had to time his move carefully; he suspected that Korbrass would start firing off their Aspect wildly in every direction when he made himself known. If they got too close, they might be able to disrupt the ritual even without seeing it.

Caiz heard Korbrass’ labored breathing, muttered curses and grunts as they got close. They were clearly in rough shape, Qualo may not have stopped them, but a knife to the back wasn’t going to do them any favors. They started moving faster and faster as they got closer to Caiz, transitioning from climbing stairs to jumping from handhold to handhold in microgravity. Caiz held his breath as Korbrass passed him by, creating a tiny hallucination in their mind of Caiz’ hiding spot, but empty. There should be no way that they should be able to spot him even if they looked directly at him, but Caiz half-convinced himself that they’d notice anyway. If he didn’t make it right, then creating a hallucination centered around the one tiny area he was hiding in would just paint a target on him.

Korbrass passed by Caiz’ hiding spot without reacting to his presence, and he counted to five before he made his move. Korbrass cried out in alarm as their mind was assaulted with an insufferably high-pitched ringing and a vision of complete and utter darkness. Caiz emerged from his hiding spot tentatively, and pushed himself towards a sturdier support pillar that might not hide him especially well, but it wouldn’t get quite so shredded by Korbrass’ Aspect.

“Is that you, Little Taion?” Korbrass called out, using the mocking nickname. Caiz clenched his fist, a small bead of anger forming in his stomach. He  _ hated  _ that nickname. Caiz didn’t answer them, he didn’t do anything except keep himself in cover, peeking his head around the pillar to keep an eye on them. Surely enough, Korbrass had gone from purposeful ascension to aimlessly drifting, reaching around in the abyss to try and find something to grab on to. Caiz created various false sensations of Korbrass finding and touching ropes and wooden beams mostly at random. He smirked as Korbrass tried to push off of surfaces that weren’t there. An errantly flailing kick sent them spinning and twisting off in a random direction, no doubt hopelessly scrambling their sense of direction.

“Fine, have it your way, boy,” Korbrass snapped angrily. Caiz squeaked in distress as Korbrass started rapidly forming frozen spears around them and launching them in every direction. Ice thunked loudly into wood, including several into the pillar Caiz was hiding behind. Korbrass screamed in frustration as the barrage intensified. Spears of ice drummed against the surface of the structure, splitting wood and sending entire swaths of the lower sections tumbling back down towards the landmass. The storm of destruction flying out from Korbrass was awe-inspiring in its lethal power, deadly spears striking everything around them like raindrops in a storm. With a groan of frustration, the onslaught ended, but Caiz maintained his sensory assault. The entire structure creaked and groaned in protest, sections splintering and crumbling, floating off into the aether, but without gravity’s pull, the structure wasn’t able to collapse entirely. He heard Korbrass panting heavily, and peeked out from his hiding place at them. Surely, Korbrass’ Aspect must be reaching its limit, right? One of the reasons that the Ta’vall family had always served as the protectors of their fellow Aspects was because the Ta’vall Aspect itself had more longevity than the others. But surely, even Korbrass must be reaching their ceiling soon.

He caught sight of Korbrass amidst the destruction, floating freely amongst the debris of the structure that they’d ripped apart. Despite the devastation, Caiz didn’t doubt that if they could see again, they could still navigate their way through the microgravity back up to the more intact sections of the bridge, and the ritual chamber. The effects of the ritual were still there, still spreading across the pillar’s surface. The expanding circle had reached the impact site, and an angry red light shone out of it like a gateway to the abyss.

Caiz watched as Korbrass curled themselves up into a ball, muscle memory serving even though Caiz was blinding their senses. He wasn’t sure what they were doing, but then he saw the frost forming. Shimmering patterns of frost appeared all around Korbrass, radiating outwards in expanding chains of hovering snowflakes as the moisture in the air froze. The chill struck Caiz, and he shivered, sticking his arms into his armpits and pulling his knees up to his chest to stay warm. How much heat could Korbrass really sap out of the area without freezing themselves, too? He had no idea; he’d never seen the Ta’vall Aspect used this way. The ring of snowflakes expanded outwards, little rainbows of colour casting about in every direction as light refracted off the frozen moisture. The chill struck Caiz like a hammer to the chest, and he trembled as he realized just how much danger he was in. He could feel his ears stinging, his eyes were watering, and as he blinked, he felt the stickiness of his eyelids freezing.

He pushed himself as far away from Korbrass’ vortex as he could get without getting too far away to work his Aspect. Even the small movements made his joints ache, his breath was like a knife in his lungs, and he was starting to lose feeling in his extremities. Caiz struggled to breathe, his vision darkening around the edges, and he lost track of what he was doing. Suddenly, warmth buffeted him. It shook him awake, but it wasn’t enough to free him of the bone-deep chill that had sliced through him. He sucked in a breath of lukewarm air that burned his lungs, and gasped as he looked around. The hallucinations. He’d stopped maintaining them. He felt around desperately for Korbrass’ mind, but there was nothing. He looked up, and saw them just up above him, pushing off a handhold and getting close to the ritual platform.

“Hey!!” Caiz shouted. He tried to give pursuit, but everything hurt, his extremities were aching terribly and he could barely move. Korbrass looked down at him disinterestedly, and conjured another barrage of ice spears. Caiz pulled himself back into cover just as the projectiles thunked loudly into the support pillar, the wood splitting and cracking ominously. When he dared to glance back around it, he saw that Korbrass had simply continued their climb, happy to ignore him. Caiz glanced back at the pillar, the distorted pattern had spread so much, it was hard to see a spot that was still the original pitch-black hue that it was supposed to be. But, there was something new, a bright red spot the same colour as the cracks and the impact site. The spot was roiling ominously like water on the verge of boiling over the edge of its pot.

There was a loud ringing thunderclap, and a tremor vibrated through the air of the Shard. A huge, black harpoon burst through the red spot from inside the pillar. Red cracks formed and spread all across the surface pulsing and glowing angrily. The harpoon - the  _ second _ harpoon made the whole pillar twist and bend like it was a reed subjected to erratic currents of water. Everything twisted and warped as the ritual area clashed with the intensifying splinters, colour bleeding together. Caiz felt gravity, suddenly pulling him sideways, then downwards, then up. He felt heat, humidity, crushing pressure and sucking vacuum. His vision all blurred together like mixing paint, and he tried to cry out, but he couldn’t hear anything.

The last thing he felt was gravity. He recognized that he was falling, and then there was nothing.

***

**EPILOGUE**

There were so many sights, sounds, and smells in the forest that the wolf had almost forgotten what it was like. Birds chirped and flitted about through the branches completely unconcerned. Rodents and other small animals scurried away from the wolf as she passed, fearfully unaware that they were not her prey today. The air was full of pollen, musk, rot, and life. It was an impossibly complex tapestry of scents and yet the wolf’s nose sifted through them with incredible precision and purpose. She searched for one scent in particular.

_ There. _

The wolf caught it again. The unmistakable scent of her prey. She was getting closer. With a powerful bound of her hind legs, the wolf bolted off through the trees, sending all manner of small creatures scattering before her as she tore through the underbrush. The noise and abruptness of the movement was the point. Her prey was larger than most of the small creatures around her right now, and so if it moved, she’d hear. If it ran, she could chase. Her prey could run, and it could hide, but neither action would deter her. Such things were merely a part of the hunt.

_ There. _

A splashing footstep reached her ears as a slightly larger creature waded through the nearby stream. It was distant and only barely audible, but the wolf’s ears were keen and she knew what to listen for. She ran as fast as she could, low-hanging branches and nettles trying to scratch at her but not getting through her thick coat of fur. She reached the quietly whispering stream quickly and paused, listening intently. If her prey had crossed the stream, the scent may be hard to track, but she was close now, she knew it. If her prey made the mistake of moving, she’d have them. Birds. Squirrels. Something slightly larger - perhaps a rabbit.

_ There. _

A branch broke, but more telling than that, there was a tiny yelp of frustration and fear. It was almost nothing, but it was distinct, unmistakeable,  _ it could not hide what it was from her. _

The wolf howled, announcing herself, letting her prey know how close she was. It was a taunt, and it was a declaration of impending victory. She howled so that she could have the satisfaction of a proper chase. The sound intensified as her prey tried to bolt, crashing through the forest with all the subtlety of a rockslide. A rockslide that would never outrun her. She snarled and leapt across the stream, giving chase.

With each bound, the frantic crashing grew louder, and was joined by other sounds as well. Rustling fabric, panicked breathing, a thunderous heartbeat. She saw it through a gap in the trees, and she closed in. She let her prey spot her, let it know she was circling, and it stopped running blindly. In a split decision, the hapless morsel ran towards a nearby tree, trying to climb it to safety.

The wolf roared, leaping through the air and landing right next to the terrified beast. She threw herself at it, her massive bulk carrying the frail little human to the ground. The beast yelped in pure terror as the wolf pinned his body to the floor with her massive paws and leaned forward, snarling at him, drool dripping through her fangs to land on his face.

“M-Miss Maiike…” The prey tried to whimper, tried to use its noises like magic, a silly, pointless incantation to make her stop. The wolf snarled at him again angrily, and with a swift kick, rolled the prey over onto its stomach. She clamped her maw down on the back of the morsel’s neck, teeth pricking the tender flesh threateningly, but not penetrating it. Her prey trembled in submission and defeat, and had the wisdom not to use its squawks to try and make her stop.

The wolf’s fore legs and upper body changed ever so slightly, becoming a cross between her prey’s and her own. She used her new front paw to wrap her articulated, clawed fingers around the prey’s throat. The other paw went around the trembling beast’s waist. Her sharp claws shredded the woven skin he wore over his fleshy skin, and pulled him up into a position where he was presenting his ass to her. She snarled threateningly at her bitch as she positioned him properly, and the morsel whined submissively, assuring her he wouldn’t move. He submitted not only out of fear and defeat, but because it was where he belonged. Beneath her, presenting his ass to her to be claimed was where her prey belonged, because he was  _ hers.  _ Her cock flushed with blood and started to slide out of its sheath because this was where she belonged. Atop him. Claiming him.

She repositioned her fore legs, one paw on the middle of her prey’s back, and the other on the back of his head. She used her comparatively immense strength to force his head down into the dirt. She edged her hips forward, cock flopping free and glistening with precum. Her first tentative thrust missed the mark, and so did her second, but she wasn’t concerned. There was only one way this process would end, and she had all the patience in the world.

On the fifth attempt, her cock slipped in between her prey’s smooth ass cheeks, and she didn’t pull away as much this time. With a low growl of triumph and anticipation, she started making smaller, more subtle movements. The tip of her cock probed him, seeking, testing, patiently waiting to claim what had been offered to it. The tip caught in the ring of muscle, and her prey whimpered in fear and anticipation. For all it might play at trepidation, for all that it would run, the beast below her knew it couldn’t deny what was to happen any more than it could stop the sun from rising.

She pushed, her hips punching hard into the prey’s tight ring of flesh and burying her cock deep in a single thrust. The morsel cried out in pain at the rough entry even though the wolf’s cock was only a fraction of it’s true size. She buried it deep in the boy’s hole, and then, she changed again.

Maiike’s legs, torso, neck and face took on some more human features. Her cock grew, not because just because it was swelling with blood, but because her shapeshifting swelled it with more tissue. Raven moaned and whined in discomfort as the expanding organ stretched his hole wider at a steady pace. Even though she’d had it at a relatively modest size when she’d first penetrated him, she’d been very rough, and had clearly hurt him. Oh well.

“Miiiiine,” Maiike growled, her voice gravelly and rough, still not fully human. She used her new legs to get some proper leverage, and then rammed her hips forward, newly thickened cock punching deep into Raven’s boy pussy. Her balls swung low, slapping against the smooth, nearly featureless bulge of Raven’s crotch. His entire cock and balls had been surgically removed long ago, leaving him with only a hole to piss out of. It wasn’t like he needed them of course. Raven was a piece of meat who existed to be claimed. He was  _ her  _ piece of meat.

Maiike thrust viciously into Raven’s compliant body, each brutal movement of her hips shoving his face into the dirt. He let out tiny whimpers as she rutted with him. She gently dug her claws into his back and dragged them downwards, forming a pattern of deep red scratch marks on the pristine canvas. She reallocated more tissue into her cock, inflating it up to its normal size, and roughly slammed forward. She hit the bend in Raven’s rectum and forced it straight, hilting her dick as deep in him as it would go.

Maiike moved a claw down to Raven’s chest, feeling the tiny little boy tits that had grown there in the absence of his testicles. She ran her hand down towards his crotch, fingers feeling his tender skin, claws raking it. She got down to his smooth bulge and felt the smear of wetness that had accrued there as a result of her pulverizing his prostate.

She growled softly, grinding her hips against his soft ass, enjoying the tightness and warmth of his body.  _ Her body. Her cock sleeve. _

“Miss…” Raven gasped, pushing himself up a little bit. He was shuddering and moaning like a bitch in heat. The fact that her prey couldn’t really cum properly didn’t stop him from being a wanton little slut. Maiike snarled at him and leaned down, clamping her jaws around his neck. Raven froze in fear as her teeth dug into his flesh, hot breath tickling his neck. She bit him gently, teeth digging in and creating tiny little droplets of blood.

She fucked him hard, keeping her cock buried deeply into him. The force of the thrust jostled her teeth, and Raven whined softly in pain. Maiike felt the vibrations of his cries against her tongue, and it drove her to continue ramming into him. The tension and fear in Raven grew, and soon he was crying as Maiike hammered him, her balls tightening as she prepared to dump a load of her seed into her prey.

She let go of Raven’s throat and howled, announcing her dominance and her victory over the piece of meat below her as she orgasmed. Her balls tightened and pulsed, flooding Raven’s boy pussy with her cum. She shot into him again and again, her oversized balls pumping the frail twink so full of her seed that she heard his stomach gurgling to accommodate it all. She kept her cock buried in him to seal it inside, panting, her tongue lolling out of her maw. As her explosive orgasm slowly ebbed and gave way to afterglow, she leaned down and licked Raven’s cheek. He groaned at that, but still barely moved, his body exhausted first from running from her and then from being so savagely bred.

Maiike pulled her cock free of his ass, the hole gaping obscenely and oozing her cum. It trickled down his perineum all the way around to his smooth, doll-like crotch before it dripped to the ground. Maiike walked on all fours next to him, and then raised one of her hind legs.

The stream of urine hit him, and he whined in pain as she marked him as hers. It covered his back, getting into the scratches she’d left on him, and he struggled to crawl into a more upright position despite his sorry state.

“Owww… Miss…” he whined at her as she finished, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Maiike strode up to him and licked his face, which she had specifically avoided marking. She borked happily at him, and started to shift into her human form.

“Was that, ummm… I mean, thank you, Miss Maiike.” Raven started to complain but quickly thought better about it. Toira’s fangs, but he was a mess. She’d covered him in bloody scratches, bites, dirt, and her fluids.

“There’s all kinds of beasties out here on Terra,” Maiike said as her vocal chords returned. “How else will they know who you belong to?” Raven continued to pout adorably, and she leaned forward to kiss him, tasting the werewolf saliva she’d plastered all over his face. It tasted more like dog slobber than she’d thought it would, and she wiped her mouth afterwards.

The two of them headed back to the stream so that Raven could wash himself. Maiike sat at the edge of the water, trailing her feet in it as she watched him. She took such joy in that moment, happily glowing with orgasm as her boy toy splashed around in the water. On the Shard, water circulation and recycling had been nearly a full-time endeavor for her family. They had a lake, but no streams, rivers, waterfalls, or serious rainfall.

Raven emerged from his bath, looking clean, but also like he’d gotten ravaged by a wild beast. He padded over to his ripped and torn clothing and took them up in his hands, working his Aspect in subtle ways to re-weave the shredded fabric. He took special care to fix the pair of panties she’d obliterated before sliding them back on. Maiike stayed naked, leaving her body in its most accurate to nature human form.

“Are we… going back to the camp, then?” he asked, sitting next to her and fiddling with his hair.

“Yeah, I guess. Ajna should be done with her scouting trip soon,” she said, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“Hopefully she finds some of the others…” He murmured. “Do you think they’ll be nearby?”

“Mm, I kind of doubt it, pet. Do you remember where we first formed the Shard, and took the landmasses from?” she looked over into his eyes.

“Umm, yeah. Sort of? I’m not… never knew geography all that well.” he admitted, to nobody’s surprise.

“Well, I don’t know where we are now, but I can tell you based on the climate and the local wildlife that we’re definitely thousands of kilometers away, maybe more. If we were flung this far away from our entry point when we brought the Shard down, who knows where the others ended up.” Maiike heaved a sigh.

“We’ll find them, don’t worry,” Raven smiled nervously up at her, and she leaned in to kiss him with a laugh. Since when was Raven more optimistic than her about  _ anything? _

“Yeah, even if it takes another century.”

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh, holy shit, if you got through all this, ty so much! <3 This is the end of this story for now~~


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